SITA interrogation postponed

Johannesburg, 17 Oct 2007

The State IT Agency (SITA) is to be questioned next week on its R428 340 "thank you" junket for 75 government officials.

Democratic Alliance spokesman Karel Minnie has labelled the event a farce.

"SITA is a government agency specifically directed at servicing the IT needs of government departments and entities, and does not do business in the open market. I fail to understand why it is necessary for a government entity to take out government officials to thank them for their business," he says.

Poor attendance

SITA and the Department of Public Service and Administration were originally scheduled to appear before Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration last week.

However, Minnie says this meeting had to be abandoned, as only four members of Parliament were present.

"The director-general of the Department of Public Service and Administration, with his personnel, and the SITA CEO, with his personnel, were flown from Pretoria and accommodated in Cape Town. However, there were not enough MPs present to constitute a quorum, so their time and the state's money were wasted," he explains.

SITA GM of communications Elton Fortuin says this meeting will now take place on 24 October.

Expenses 'questionable'

Earlier this month, the Department of Public Service and Administration told Parliament that the junket cost SITA R428 340.

Of this, R217 840 was spent on hotel accommodation at the Arabella Sheraton Grand Hotel, R159 000 was spent on travel costs, R48 000 for a lunch at Jonkershuis restaurant for 100 people, and R3 500 for a two-piece local band to provide background music at the lunch.

However, Minnie says aspects of this response are questionable.

"The Jonkershuis restaurant Web site specifies the average cost for a meal as between R80 and R90. Why then did the SITA lunch cost R480 per head? Also, I noted that the department did not reveal the costs for the tickets to the Nedbank Million Dollar Golf Challenge and the Cape Town Jazz Festival. Nor did it reveal the costs for its 'adrenaline-packed drive around the Cape Peninsula on Harley-Davidson motorcycles'."

'Within its rights'

The front page of the Sunday Independent carried a story on the event earlier this year.

In April, then SITA CEO and current Home Affairs DG Mavuso Msimang lambasted the media and, in particular, the Sunday Independent for its "paranoia" and "knee-jerk reactions".

In a letter to the newspaper, he explained the state-owned entity was well within its rights to host such an event, given that it is unsubsidised by government and is required to compete with the private sector for a significant portion of its revenue.

SITA has declined to comment further on the matter.