Fire travel scam MPs - Ginwala
2004-08-16 08:39
Cape Town - It is illegal for parliamentarians to use their air travel vouchers for any purposes other than air travel and those guilty of the fraud must be removed from parliament, regardless of their seniority, former Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Frene Ginwala said on Sunday.
As more details of parliament's travel voucher scam continue to emerge, Ginwala said the probe into the alleged abuse of travel vouchers has been "very slow".
In an interview with the Witness, Ginwala said she and her fellow presiding officers at parliament, including the current National Assembly speaker Baleka Mbete, had adopted an uncompromising position on the matter right from the start.
From the day the first evidence of abuse of travel vouchers came to light, they had reported the matter to the police and demanded an investigation.
Ginwala said that when investigations began, some travel agents tried to contact presiding officers at parliament to warn them that "a lot of high-profile people" would be involved.
"We issued a statement saying that nobody would be protected," Ginwala said. "We were not going to call off the inquiry just because high profile names were going to be involved."
Commenting on the speed of the investigation, Ginwala said: "It has been very slow, but that is the way things go in South Africa."
- The Witness