The Desai Commission of Inquiry is to cost the Western Cape government an anticipated R1,5-million rand, according to the adjustments estimate presented by Finance MEC Ebrahim Rasool on Tuesday.
The Western Cape adjustments estimate describes ”a new sub-programme” in the Premier’s office which was created to facilitate the work of the commission ”whose objective is to promote good governance with the output being the submission of a report relating to the public administration practices and procedures in the Offices of the Premier and Director-General of the Province from 1994 to the date of the proclamation of the special provincial gazette of March 28, 2002”.
Judge Siraj Desai, the commission chairperson, said earlier today that his report would be handed to Western Cape Premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk next week.
The commission is expected to make findings on whether former premier Gerald Morkel and the Democratic Alliance, the former provincial ruling
party, received money from alleged German fraudster Jurgen Harksen. It was appointed by another former Premier, Peter Marais, before he resigned from office amid sexual harassment allegations.
The commission was also set up to investigate the Western Cape bugging devices in the legislature building in Cape Town’s Wale Street allegedly used during Morkel’s tenure. Morkel recently was ousted as Mayor of Cape Town by a new ANC-NNP local government coalition.
Asked if the money on the commission was being well spent, Rasool, who is ANC leader in the legislature, said that he believed it was as they did not have to pay a public service commission official and the judge. – I-Net Bridge