Cape Town - Dozens of government officials implicated in corrupt activities have either been arrested, convicted or are in the process of having their cases finalised by the relevant law enforcement agencies, Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said on Monday.
Responding to media questions as to what has happened to the 1 499 officials charged for misconduct nationally, she said government was committed to clean governance and that anyone found to have breached the law would have to face the consequences.
It also emerged at the Governance and Administration cluster briefing, in which Dlamini Zuma serves as a chairperson, that through the investigation of several cases of corruption, the state had recovered R110 million from perpetrators in various departments.
On Sunday, the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster said it was set to meet its target of arresting and prosecuting 100 people suspected of serious corruption by April 2014. The same people are suspected of having more than R5 million in illicit assets.
On Monday, Dlamini Zuma attributed some of the successes in dealing with misconduct in government to the monitoring and evaluation which was strengthened when a separate ministry for this function was introduced in 2009.
"We have increased our strategic focus, improved departmental and intergovernmental coordination, and introduced more rigour into our planning, monitoring and evaluation process."
Ministers had also completed their first year of quarterly reporting to Cabinet, enabling the monitoring and implementation of the delivery agreement signed with President Jacob Zuma in 2010.
Dlamini Zuma said government had also implemented a joint programme of front line service delivery monitoring. This involved, among other things, unannounced visits to key delivery points such as police stations, Home Affairs offices and health facilities across the country.
Since June last year, about 120 monitoring visits have been undertaken in five provinces with improvement plans being developed where challenges were picked up.
