05 Jun 2022

All state owned enterprises (SOEs) will soon have a standard code of conduct to address issues of governance. This was revealed by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of State President, Ms Goitsemang Morekisi when answering questions from members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday.

“We are currently coming up with a code of conduct that will help us to assess the SOEs,” she said. Ms Morekisi said lack of a standardised code of conduct made it difficult to assess the state owned enterprises, adding that the ministry dealt with state owned enterprises through their parent ministries.

She further told the PAC that not all state owned enterprises had signed the current code of conduct saying that those that had not signed had been advised to do so, through their parent ministries.

Ms Morekisi said the standardised code of conduct would thus address the challenge.

The permanent secretary was responding to a question from the Member of Parliament for Tonota, Mr Pono Moatlhodi, who had wanted to know why out of the 62 parastatals only 22 had signed the code of conduct.

Mr Moatlhodi had also asked the accounting officer to explain why the ministry noted that it was still faced with challenges of addressing some disciplinary issues.

Ms Morekisi conceded that there were challenges, especially with government fleet, whereby the police accidents reports go through parent ministries, before being handed to the ministry accounting officer.

She said by the time reports reached the ministry accounting authority, a lot of time would have been lost, which affected following up involved officers.

She however, said with the help of the attorney general, they were following all officers, who were involved in accidents to recover government money. Ends/bopa/tmk.03.05.22. ENDS