Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is expected to face a grilling from several parliamentary committees on the exemption of Eskom from disclosing irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
The committees will meet Godongwana in Parliament on Wednesday over the exemption granted to Eskom after the state of disaster was implemented.
The decision has angered political parties, civil society and other stakeholders.
AfriForum said it was taking the matter to the high court.
The standing committee on the auditor-general, the standing committees on appropriations and finance and the portfolio committee on public enterprises will grill Godongwana on Wednesday.
“Furthermore, the committees would like to know from the minister what informed that decision and its implications. The Minister of Finance exempted Eskom, in terms of section 92 of the PFMA (Public Finance Management Act), No 1 of 1999, of the obligation to report on section 55 (2)(b)(i) of the PFMA and Treasury Regulation 28.2.1 made in terms of section 76 of the PFMA,” said the chairpersons of the committees.
Former chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), Themba Godi, also slammed the decision to exempt Eskom from disclosing irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
He said it was unheard for an entity like Eskom to be exempt from accounting to Parliament on these matters.
He said reporting on wasteful, fruitless and irregular expenditure was a key oversight mechanism for Parliament to hold government and its state-owned entities accountable.
This was a measure to prevent corruption.
The National Treasury had said this week that Eskom would still be required to report on irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure in its annual report.
Eskom has in the past few years faced losses of over R20 billion.
The government has been pushing to separate the entity into three divisions for distribution, generation and transmission.
The government had insisted that it would not allow the company to collapse.
But parties were infuriated after they learnt that Eskom has been exempted from disclosing irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
In her reports in Parliament the auditor-general had warned that most of the corruption took place in procurement processes in municipalities, departments and entities.
She had said in some instances there was no paper trail in some of the departments, making it difficult to know how goods and services were procured as there was no evidence to back this up.
siyabonga.mkhwanazi@inl.co.za
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