Roads chief puts all projects on hold

[BBSA]

The chief executive of the Road Traffic Management Corporation, Ranthoko Rakgoale, has instructed staff to shelve projects worth millions of rands - barely four months after he blew more than R8-million on an international conference.

Financial mismanagement at the parastatal has triggered a litany of complaints from disgruntled staff to transport minister Sbu Ndebele.

Rakgoale this week informed staff that the parastatal was in dire financial straits and that all projects, including those that had already taken off, should immediately be put on hold.

But in September last year, his office splurged more than R8-million on an international road traffic management conference at Cape Town's International Convention Centre although the RTMC had only budgeted R3-million for the event.

Documents further show that the RTMC spent:

• More than R600 000 on a consultancy company hired to investigate three staffers who had allegedly irregularly approved R1.2-million in salary increases to all staff, and
• R13.3-million on auditing company Deloitte and Touche, to assist the RTMC's finance department to clean up its books.

Rakgoale previously authorised the RTMC to spend R1.3-million to hire suites at soccer stadiums for staff and guests to watch the Confederations Cup.

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When is this nonsense going to stop, we can not continue like this!

 

[Ronjay]

More

When is this nonsense going to stop, we can not continue like this!

And the idiot wont even get as much as a slap on the wrist. So they spend money to find out how they spend money. Brilliant. One would think that they had their own auditors as a big company, though.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

choo choo sayeth the gravy train

 

[WilD_CaT]

And the idiot wont even get as much as a slap on the wrist. So they spend money to find out how they spend money. Brilliant. One would think that they had their own auditors as a big company, though.

Deloitte and Touche wasn't providing audit services, they were in effect doing the books for them. Then the RTMC would've had to pay another audit firm to perform an independant audit if required. (You can hardly pay Deloitte to give independant assessment of the books if they did the books themselves can you? Wouldn't be very" independent" would it?)

Basically their books were in a mess and they obviously didn't have the people to put everything in order. So they payed knowledgable outsiders rather than hiring internally, which is likely to result in the same problems. Under qualified people, little to no management, increasing costs.

Deloitte have a reputation to protect so it isn't likely that they will screw up the books, however as professionals and accountants they do charge a lot, for which they are perfectly justified. It ain't Deloitte's fault that the state department is a screw-up.

Article makes it sounds that Deloitte or any other firm shouldn't have done anything which isn't the case if the books were not in order. Someone would've had to come in, in order to do everything properly.
Article also makes it sounds that Deloittes fees were unjustified...they are a business like any other. On top of paying their own costs (Such as salaries) which will be higher than state salaries they have to add on gross profit.

If you want to decrease costs then hire the correct people, pay them and do the job internally. Having someone come in to correct someone else's mistakes will always be an expensive exercise.

For that matter the consultancy fees are probably due to the fact that the people in charge don't know what they are doing and thus have to hire people to "teach" them and tell them what to do and how to run things. This is a result of hiring the wrong people. The people who hired the people in charge of the RTMC should be looked at.

It is their job to hire people who can perform the work done. If you gonna hire a comrade brother or someone else who is not qualified the only way for them to learn is to hire professional consultants.

So the government needs to be criticised here and not just RTMC management.

 

[Tick]

When is this nonsense going to stop

When there is nothing left to plunder and destroy.

 

[semiautomatix]

Deloitte and Touche wasn't providing audit services, they were in effect doing the books for them. Then the RTMC would've had to pay another audit firm to perform an independant audit if required. (You can hardly pay Deloitte to give independant assessment of the books if they did the books themselves can you? Wouldn't be very" independent" would it?)

Basically their books were in a mess and they obviously didn't have the people to put everything in order. So they payed knowledgable outsiders rather than hiring internally, which is likely to result in the same problems. Under qualified people, little to no management, increasing costs.

Deloitte have a reputation to protect so it isn't likely that they will screw up the books, however as professionals and accountants they do charge a lot, for which they are perfectly justified. It ain't Deloitte's fault that the state department is a screw-up.

Article makes it sounds that Deloitte or any other firm shouldn't have done anything which isn't the case if the books were not in order. Someone would've had to come in, in order to do everything properly.
Article also makes it sounds that Deloittes fees were unjustified...they are a business like any other. On top of paying their own costs (Such as salaries) which will be higher than state salaries they have to add on gross profit.

If you want to decrease costs then hire the correct people, pay them and do the job internally. Having someone come in to correct someone else's mistakes will always be an expensive exercise.

For that matter the consultancy fees are probably due to the fact that the people in charge don't know what they are doing and thus have to hire people to "teach" them and tell them what to do and how to run things. This is a result of hiring the wrong people. The people who hired the people in charge of the RTMC should be looked at.

It is their job to hire people who can perform the work done. If you gonna hire a comrade brother or someone else who is not qualified the only way for them to learn is to hire professional consultants.

So the government needs to be criticised here and not just RTMC management.

Didn't help, now did it?

 

[ToAsTeD]

When there is nothing left to plunder and destroy.

+1