The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal will use R20 million to prevent corruption, save money and speed up the needs of the people.
This was revealed by Minister Martin Mayer when he delivered his speech at a major technical conference organized by his department in Mayville, yesterday.
He said they sat down and realized that technology has a huge role to play in ensuring that many things are done properly.
First of all, he mentioned that technology wants to have its role in saving money. He said that there are documents that he has to sign and then they are taken and put in the car to be signed by someone else and he said that this means a big waste of time and money.
He said now they want to do everything in a modern way.
“We want this way of working to end now because we believe that it is outdated and delays, it wastes time and money unnecessarily,” he said.
He said they are determined to fight to talk about the fact that technology seems to be changing gears in this department.
Regarding the issue of corruption, he gave an example of the issue of tenders and said that if the documents are signed, they will disappear and it will no longer be easy to catch those involved in that corruption.
He said that if everything is done with modern technology, there will be permanent evidence that there is a person who signed and approved the matter of that tender which will be discussed at that time.
“You can see how important it is that we now start demanding that our department depends more on technology. I don’t have the slightest doubt that this will definitely help us a lot and in different ways,” he said.
He said they don’t need something that will push them back or that will cause money to be wasted unnecessarily because they are a department with little money.
“It’s this small amount of money that we have to make sure that we do everything correctly,” he explained.
He said they also believe that technology can do something when it comes to speeding up the needs of the people.
The chief executive of this department, Mr. Vish Govender, also followed Meyer’s words and emphasized the importance of them using technology to benefit their department.