Minister now Abandons her "Committee of Inquiry"

During the course of a fisheries portfolio committee hearing yesterday, Sue Middleton - acting DDG of  fisheries - confirmed that the Minister will now not be holding her famed "committee of inquiry" she hastily announced on 21 March 2012. 

When the Minister announced the "committee of inquiry" which was supposed to unearth widespread tender corruption and maladministration in the fisheries branch, we all hailed it a red herring;  a desperate attempt to detract from her Sekunjalo tender woes.

Not only are we all now proved correct but the Minister has kept true to her record of pointless rhetoric and back-peddling.  It can be reliably assumed that the Minister quickly realised that any such committee of inquiry into tender allocations would unearth how rotten her department really is. Remember the illegal award of the tender to Anix Consulting, for example, and what about the ANC's involvement in the illegal "transfer" of a lobster quota from 180 shareholders of Grey Cottages Investments to one Mary-Anne Brown (aka Marianne Brown; Muriel Davids)? See http://feikemanagement.blogspot.com/2010/10/has-fishing-company-been-hijacked.html and see http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article761457.ece/Boatless-ANC-shopkeeper-gets-two-ton-fishing-quota 

Middleton however advised that the Minister has a new goalpost. The Minister has apparently approached the President to set up a commission of enquiry - note COMMISSION - which will be chaired by a retired judge who will now investigate fishing quota allocations! 

This Minister is truly proving that she is not only at a complete loss as to how to manage fisheries, she is appallingly dishonest. Had the DA not demanded clarity on the status of the March 21 Committee of Inquiry, we may never had known that the Minister was now pursuing another witch-hunt. And we point out again, all this mucking around a mere year before long term quotas need to be re-allocated in a number of fisheries! 

Finally, Middleton confirmed that the DG, Langa Zita had apparently laid criminal charges against SMIT PENTOW (she was not clear about this - our assumption) but could not provide a case number or where the charges were laid.