MPS IN A BIND OVER ICC&FISH

Parliament, it would appear, is a contradiction in terms for, on one hand, it votes to investigate the costly toilets for the controversial International Convention Centre and Five-Star Hotel (ICC&FISH) while on the other hand, and even before the probe gets off the ground, it promptly approves an additional E1.2 billion loan for the same vanity project.

This speaks of double standards, if not typical political double speak, for the elected representatives of the people in the House of Assembly who took the decision to investigate the costly toilets. For that is akin to the legislators selling a dummy to the electorate by appearing as if they were concerned about the ever escalating costs of the project and its concomitant negative impact on government expenditure that in turn is compromising service delivery. Initially after having elected to investigate the project’s E70 million toilets, the logical progression under the circumstances would have been for the legislators to put the loan bill on ice to allow its seven-member select committee to do its job.

This is assuming that the objective behind Members of Parliament (MPs) electing to investigate the exorbitant expense for toilets, at a cost of approximately E280 000 per unit, was to save the taxpayers’ Emalangeni and cents especially in the wake of unflattering findings by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that government’s current cash-flow challenges was owed to big and unrestrained spending in the face of diminishing resources. As I see it, continuing with the toilets investigations is also adding on the wastage of public resources the IMF was talking about and more so now that lawmakers have approved the sourcing of additional funds for the project, which definitely includes the costs of the toilets.

Investigation

Now after signing off on the loan renders redundant continuing with the investigation, since by so doing the lawmakers have tacitly endorsed big spending on the toilets. Had MPs been acting in the best interests of and sympathetic to the taxpayers at least they should have abandoned the investigation and spared the taxpayer financing their standing committee. As things stand the decision to install the expensive toilets, just like the construction of the ICC&FISH itself, is cast in stone and the MPs cannot do anything about it and the sad fact is that they already knew this. They cannot now pretend not to know how the political system they are serving is operating even if they are novices in politics.

As it were Parliament is historically complicit to government’s wasteful and reckless spending owing to its prerogative of appropriating public spending as well as having oversight on how public funds are employed. The controversial ICC&FISH vanity project is but a microcosm of Parliament’s ineffectiveness and why it is serves only as a rubber stamp to executive decisions. Had Parliament been independent and effective, it would have stopped the project at conception by withholding funding on the basis of it being wrongly premised. A cursory research on projects of this nature would have informed legislators that government should have secured an operator at the conception phase because, unlike spaza shops, hotels are built to order – meaning that they are constructed according to the specifications of the operator in tandem to its corporate image.

May be the costs of toilets would have also informed that discussion but now the horse has already bolted to do anything about everything. It would appear no lessons were gleaned from the Pigg’s Peak Hotel project hence the same problem is reoccurring in respect of the ICC&FISH. But that ought not to surprise the discerning since that is the nature of Tinkhundla political system – it inherently has no checks and balances apropos decision-making.

And while on the question of the standing committee investigating the ICC&FISH toilets, one would have thought that with the advent of portfolio committees in the legislature we would see less of these standing committees. As I penned this column there were a number of such committees in place to investigate this and that. Each of these committees is an expense, probably a huge one at that in terms of sitting allowances, investment in time and production of reports. The regularity with which these standing committees are appointed would suggest that portfolio committees are not that effective in discharging their responsibilities. In turn this points to an inherent weakness on the very political system in terms of service delivery, which could be hampered by a host of factors. These may include but not limited to appointing wrong candidates in key and important positions from board to executive management levels underwritten by a decidedly nepotistic policy.

As I see it, the season of standing committees speak to deficiencies as well as crisis management of important institutions tasked with service delivery. At this point I do not want to even imagine that these standing committees could be a guise to meet the budgetary needs of lawmakers because even by their standards that would be a low blow to the

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: