Johannesburg - The EFF claim that Minister of Small Business Development Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams and Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni have been using taxpayers money.
The two ministers have been said to be using this money and living a lavish lifestyle during a hardcore lockdown and travel-related restrictions over the past three years of Covid-19.
The party said in their statement that they are disgusted by the parliamentary response from the acting director-general of the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT)
According to the fighters, the DCDT has spent a “deeply shocking” amount of R15 million on accommodation for the ministers, their deputy ministers as well as other officials.
"Ntshavheni, Abrahams and their deputies spent R5 million combined on accommodation, while the globe was battling a deadly and restrictive pandemic. The accommodation was inclusive of hundreds of thousands of rand spent on food, including an outrageous amount of R739 000 on catering since 2019,” the EFF said.
The EFF highlighted that these revelations came as a surprise as both ministers have been implicated in corruption scandals and misuse of State resources in the past and they have never suffered the consequences of their actions because they belong to President Cyril Ramaphosa's faction.
In addition, Ntshavheni was implicated in the second volume of the State Capture report that was submitted to Judge Zondo which deals with the capture of state-owned entities.
Furthermore, the EFF said spending such an exorbitant sum on accommodation while all government meetings and interactions were held virtually for the past years was inhumane.
“Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams and Khumbudzo Ntshavheni are parasites who use the State as a means of personal enrichment,” read the EFF statement.
The fighters said if Ramaphosa had a commitment to rooting out corruption, then he would remove the “good-for-nothing individuals” ministers who misused State money in the face of retrenchments, closure of businesses and death.
kamogelo.moichela@inl.co.za
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