PAC raises alarm over payment of ghost houses
Pini Bothoko | Friday August 14, 2020 12:58
The Committee raised the concern during the presentation by the Botswana Police Service (BPS) Commissioner, Keabetswe Makgophe.
The police commissioner disclosed to have paid over P1 million for an unoccupied building in Francistown for a period of 15 months. Admitting the misuse of public funds, Makgophe said after securing the huge building, they had to undergo a process of partitioning it, something that took a time than they had expected.
“Some companies protested that they should have won the tender. They ended up going to Court and in the process delaying our plans to partition the building. However, the new requirement is that if you want to rent a property it should have been partitioned.
PAC chairperson, Dithapelo Keorapetse raised a concern stating that there is a trend in government in which buildings are paid for whilst unoccupied. He said government has used a lot of money paying for unoccupied buildings waiting for them to be partitioned.
He asked an Attorney General (AG) representative if it was possible for the terms of the contract to state that government would be able to pay rent after finishing partitioning the building.
“Also, is it possible for the two parties to go into an agreement for the government not to opt out of the agreement during that time?” he enquired.
Responding to the poser, the AG representative said, “I think government can, but the problem is that the owner would say I have rented out the building to the government, but they have not been paying me. However, it could be made as term of the contract at the beginning that we will only be able to pay rent after partitioning has been completed”.
Keorapetse said a payment of P1,5 million for unoccupied building is a serious concern, more especially that it appears to be recurring amongst respective government departments. He said recently Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture had a similar presentation in which they disclosed to have paid over P3 million for an unoccupied building. However, Makgophe revealed to have learnt from that mistake, stating that of late they are clear that they want to rent out already partitioned properties.
“We are still faced with difficulties because the owner of the property would say I have just constructed this building and would love to finish it, but I have not yet won a tender to raise money for such developments. But of late we are clear, we state our requirement when advertising looking for a property to rent,” Makgophe said.
Another PAC member and Tonota MP, Pono Moatlhodi raise a concern over a number of houses reflecting in their presentation of which were rented out to some police officers who failed to pay rent.
“This is a huge concern because we are talking about public funds. What is happening commissioner?” asked Moatlhodi. Responding, Makgophe said when police officers retire at the age of 60 and have been staying in a Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) house that have been rented out to government (police service), they are allowed to retain the house.
“What happened here the officers had stated to have retained those houses and we thought they would make arrangement with BHC concerning their payments. But because the rental of those houses are paid through the Ministry of Housing, we did not realised that they continued paying for those rentals beside the fact that the officer had decided to retain it,” he said.
Makgophe said after realising that, they approached the housing ministry pleading with them to stop the payment but for some reasons they continued to pay the rentals. “I can assure this house that one of those officers is paying back the money after he was redeployed by the BPS. He is currently staying in the house, but we have stopped paying the rental,” Makgophe reassured.