Cape Town - Tourism Minister Patricia de Lille needs to approve all overseas trips that involve South African Tourism officials to ensure that its expenditure is used to promote the country abroad.
Recently, SA Tourism has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
The body, whose mandate is to grow visitor numbers to South Africa, was involved in a R1 billion sponsorship of one of the English Premier League’s best-known teams, Tottenham Hotspur.
The deal fell through following an uproar from members of the public, political parties and civil society.
De Lille’s intervention, when she became tourism minister after President Cyril Ramaphosa reshuffled his Cabinet, led to the scrapping of the deal.
The minister, who is known for her anti-corruption stance, vowed to clean-up SA Tourism by monitoring any future transactions involving the tourism body.
She said “the use of public funds must be carefully considered and for any department to fulfil its mandate, it must be done in a cost-effective way, exploring multiple options and with due consideration for all priorities”.
SA Tourism has done it again, this time seeking approval from De Lille for three tourism portfolio committee MPs to travel to New York to attend Freedom Day celebrations.
Taxpayers would have coughed up R157 659 for each MP. The costs, including fights, accommodation, ground transport and travel insurance for the delegation, were estimated at R630 639.
In declining the trip, De Lille said: “MP’s should first get permission from the Speaker, and then Parliament would pay for that. I told them it can’t be done.”
We want to commend De Lille for putting her foot down and refusing to allow the use of public funds to bankroll the MPs’ junket to the US. This was another example of unnecessary spending, which can also be described as a waste of taxpayers’ money.
The question that must be asked is, how was this visit going to assist in selling South Africa to the US tourism market?
It is clear that the spending priorities of SA Tourism are misplaced. To them, promoting South Africa means flying their officials and politicians all over the world at taxpayers’ expense.
We urge De Lille to remain vigilant and to monitor all future travels of SA Tourism officials.
In fact, De Lille should go a step further and demand that all future travels be approved by her office.
Cape Times