Committee calls for resolute action against unprofessional behaviour

Cape Town - Parliament's two defence committees have called for a blacklisting from the public service of those found guilty of acting unprofessionally or out of conflict of interest in the arms procurement programme.

They said that the issue should be dealt with "resolutely and decisively".

Each of the seven committees to which the joint investigating team's report was sent for consideration was required to submit its report to Parliament by yesterday.

However, the politically divided public accounts committee will finalise its submission only by Wednesday after trying to include all views. Failing this, the African National Congress will submit a majority report, rather than a consensus report.

The finance committee in a unanimously adopted report expressed regret that the affordability model used to assess the arms package did not consider its opportunity cost.

It recommended that in future all affordability models should do so. It also recommended finalising affordability reports final before finalising purchase negotiations, which was not the case with the arms programme.

The defence committees resolved that "persons named in the report as having been involved in conflict of interest and or engaged in activities deemed unprofessional from the perspective of the procurement process" should be barred from the public service and parastatals.

The committees also said it was worried about how long it was taking for a new Armscor Act to be developed. A work group was set up in January last year and Parliament had not been briefed on progress.

The finance committee urged cabinet to continue to review the advantages and disadvantages of exercising the options to cancel tranches two and three of the contracts on a regular basis.

Decisions on these tranches must be made in April next year and April 2004.

The committee endorsed the team's other findings, and proposed amending the Public Finance Management Act so that not only the cost implications of legislation are presented to Parliament but that this is done for all state purchases, including all financing cost and potential risk.

The shortcomings of the arms procurement process should be fully identified and analysed to rectify them.

The trade and industry committee noted the steps the department was taking to upgrade administration and monitoring in the industrial participation secretariat and to deal with the shortcomings identified in the report.

Performance reviews of the industrial and defence procurement packages would be held to ensure that they met targets.

With acknowledgement to Wyndham Hartley, Linda Ensor and Business Day.