East Cape News (Grahamstown)
Thozi Ka Manyisana
20 June 2003
Bisho — The Joint Anti-Corruption Task Unit (JACT) has made major advances in its war on government corruption in the Eastern Cape since starting operations in December last year.
Statistics supplied to ECN yesterday (subs: Fri) by JACT spokesperson Superintendent Mzikisi Fatyela revealed that the unit's 40 detectives and 10 state advocates have so far succeeded in obtaining 15 convictions against corrupt civil servants.
Fatyela was unable to give details of the sentences handed down to the guilty officials.
A further 140 civil servants have been arrested and will be going to trial soon.
The majority of those arrested came largely from the departments of social development, health and education.
The JACT also has 130 cases of fraud and corruption, ranging in individual amount from R1,5 million to R90 million and totalling more than R5 billion, currently under investigation.
According to Fatyela it is "mainly top officials" who are implicated in these cases. Fatyela said that "there will be more top officials arrested soon".
Despite these advances, the JACT is sitting on a mountain of 4 000 reported cases of fraud and corruption that still need to be individually evaluated before decisions can be made on whether to launch full scale investigations.
Fatyela said that most of these reported cases involved officials from the departments of health and education.
Fatyela said that the arrests of eight people on Thursday, including six Education Department officials and Ngqushwa municipal manager Monwabisi Somana were further proof that the JACT was "committed to rooting out corruption in the Eastern Cape".
He lashed out at those civil servants who through their greed were "degrading government and defrauding the public".
Fatyela issued a special call to members of the public to become in the the struggle against corruption by reporting suspected cases of fraud, corruption and theft and by supplying the JACT with information on such cases.
"There are cases where we need public support in order to solve them" he said.
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