Pretoria - Limpopo Provincial Government Director-General, Rachel Molepo-Modipa, has refuted Sunday media reports alleging that Premier Cassel Mathale is hampering corruption investigations of top senior management to protect his interests.
“The newspaper allegation that the Premier does not want to take action against the officials because he want to protect his own interests is a true reflection of malice.
“For the record, the allegations levelled against the premier are incorrect, misleading and devoid of the truth,” Molepo-Modiba told reporters in Polokwane on Monday.
Molepo-Modiba said the accusations in the Sunday paper bordered on inferring that Mathale had contravened the Constitution by allegedly frustrating and hampering the probe of corruption cases of senior officials in government.
She said the disciplinary processes and procedures relating to labour relation cases of senior government officials in Limpopo, which are matters of common interest between the national intervention team and Limpopo provincial government, have to be dealt with in terms of pieces of legislation such as the Labour Relations Act, Public Service Act and Public Service Regulations in the interest of ensuring that there is fair labour practice.
The director-general said allegations contained in the newspaper in question were generally not reflective of what the law provides.
The newspaper alleged that Mathale requested a forensic report from Treasury’s intervention team before he could take action against the officials. The team, according to the newspaper, had refused to give him the report, as they feared this could compromise the investigations.
“It is doubtful that the intervention team can say this, given that they are government officials who are acquainted with the disciplinary processes and procedures.
“To say that the premier does not want to act on line department officials is clearly intended to assassinate the character of the premier and vilify him without factual basis.
“We want to put it on record that the allegation reports, if any, of the five HODs have not been submitted to the premier and to say that the premier does want to act is totally baseless and unfounded,” Molepo-Modiba said. - SAnews.gov.za
