FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel and Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri clashed at the weekend over her management of state-owned IT company Sentech.<\/p>\n
Manuel charged in an interview with Business Times on Friday that Sentech had falsely accused the Treasury of being stingy with taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes we’re put under a lot of pressure,” said Manuel, who is under increasing attack from the newly powerful left wing of the ANC for strangling development by setting too-high standards for government funding.<\/p>\n
“I want to mention one example,” he said: “Sentech goes to Parliament frequently, saying Treasury is the enemy — Treasury doesn’t give them money, so they can’t do what they have to do.” <\/p>\n
But last year the government gave Sentech R500-million to connect 250 of the country’s 500 flagship Dinaledi schools, which specialise in maths and science, to the Internet.<\/p>\n
Manuel said: “That is a commitment they made … six months into the year, the R500-million is on the table, it’s there. Number of schools connected? Zero.<\/p>\n
“Where is Parliament? Who calls the minister? Who calls the DG and says: “Six months of the year have elapsed. If you’re still at zero now, you’re not going to do these things over Christmas … there’s a problem with your overseeing of Sentech,” he said.<\/p>\n
Matsepe-Casaburri hit back in an interview on Saturday, saying Treasury had given her department less than half the money asked for to put all Dinaledi schools online.<\/p>\n
She said the department had had to rework its plans, which was done by January, and then began to set up the infrastructure from which Dinaledi schools would be serviced.<\/p>\n
“We had to decide which schools to connect and where it was rural schools it was much harder. We had to think about what other departments should be connected also: home affairs, multipurpose centres, libraries, police, post offices,” she said.<\/p>\n
Matsepe-Casaburri accused Manuel of telling Sentech, which is structured as a business, to top up state funding from other sources, but said he had refused to give the company the right to borrow from the private sector.<\/p>\n
She said he had made Sentech pass up a R800-million loan which, she said, had caused the company to miss the 3-G bandwagon and let private-sector companies reap the profit from wireless connectivity.<\/p>\n
“We’re wrong if we do and we’re wrong if we don’t. I don’t know what else I was supposed to do. What other Mr Moneybags was I supposed to go to?”.<\/p>\n