No budget for MPs� rental costs
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Thursday May 21, 2015 15:51
Members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) learnt this yesterday when they enquired how much money was spent on rental expenses for MPs.
Chief accounting officer, Barbara Dithapo, told the PAC that they expected the 25 parliamentary flats that are not completed, to be handed over by the end of May. “We don’t have money that we can pay for MPs to rent out for three or four months to come. Our anticipation is that parliamentary flats should be completed by end of May.
The contractor is updating us weekly and we do visit the site,” Dithapo said. Dithapo added that some of the flats that have been handed have defects such as leaking roofs, and disfunctioning plumbing. “Though I cannot confirm how much will end up being spent on flats renovation, some of the handed flats have problems of roof leakage and plumbing,” she said. She however said the flats were done in phases and so far 13 flats had been handed over. Parliament has 44 flats. “At first we had thought all flats would be finished by end of February but that did not happen. The issue is, we had challenges of project management since most of the people who were supervising the project were juniors officers; we have since corrected that,” she said.
The chief accounting officer said their proposed budget was P20 million for renovation of those flats, adding that an extensive assessment would be done before the handing over of the flats. She also said that MPs pay utility bills for their flats, but for the financial year 2013/2014, her office had only collected P5,000 instead of P50,000 due to the ongoing renovation of parliamentary flats.
Dithapo added that there are plans to erect a screen wall around Parliament buildings. “Screen walls have been approved as part of a measure to tighten security around the Parliament vicinity. Cameras will also be installed within the premises for security purposes. A security centre will also be erected where visitors will be scanned when they visit Parliament. This will surely be a major project,” she said. Gaborone Bonnington South MP Ndaba Gaolathe however said he was unhappy that Parliament does not have any tool to account for their efficiency and effectiveness.