Former Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) Minister Patricia de Lille has bid farewell to former colleagues at the department.
“As I leave the DPWI, to serve South Africa in another capacity, I wish to thank the Acting Director-General, Dr Alec Moemi, and the staff in the department for their work and support during my time in DPWI,” De Lille said.
In an open letter to the staff, De Lille said while there were many difficulties, they have made some achievements.
“One of the key successes over the past three and a half years is that DPWI has maintained a record of reducing the number of overdue payments to service providers and recently managed to keep the on time 30-day payment rate above 95%,” De Lille said.
De Lille said they have maintained a high record of on time 30-day payments as prescribed in the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
“For the week that has just passed, DPWI made 95.1% of payments within the 30 day period to service providers.
“I wish to thank the Chief Financial Officer of DPWI, Mr Mandla Sithole, and the Finance Department for their diligence on the 30-day payments and for successfully implementing the Reapatala payment system to ensure that we pay service providers on time and I encourage them to ensure that the department continues to do so,” De Lille said.
De Lille also thanked the department for their performance with regard to land reform where they have managed to release thousands of hectares since June 2019 for land reform purposes.
“DPWI has released 218 land parcels measuring 31 439 hectares for restitution. Last year’s target for restitution was 10 000 hectares and this was exceeded.
“In November 2022, 23 families in the Chris Hani District who had been forcibly removed by the apartheid regime, received title deeds to the land they were removed from in the area known as Thornhill in the Eastern Cape.
“In January this year, I also announced that I approved the release of 1 199 hectares of land, valued at approximately R7.4 million to assist in settling a land restitution claim by the Kaapsche Hoop Community in Mpumalanga,” the minister said.
Since May 2019, DPWI has released 25 549 hectares of agricultural land (125 parcels) for the Redistribution Programme.
De Lille also thanked the team from Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) for their diligent work and pushing for progress implementation on the Strategic Integrated Projects (SIPs) in the Infrastructure Investment Plan.
“I take comfort in the fact that we put systems in place to prioritise service delivery and DPWI must continue with this work,” the former DPWI minister said.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has deployed De Lille to the Department of Tourism.
“I commit to work even harder to ensure that our country deals with inequality, unemployment and poverty.
“Tourism is a major sector for our country and we have much more to offer the world. We can do a lot more to reach our full potential and create many more jobs for our people,” De Lille said. – SAnews.gov.za
