Katlego Sekhu
In recent months, The National Lotteries Commission has been plagued by numerous corruption scandals. On Wednesday morning, Commissioner of National Lotteries, Ms Jodi Scholtz joined 959 Breakfast to clarify what the objectives of the commission are, and their plans to ensure it stops being a trove for corrupt individuals.
Following the widespread rampant corruption reports, Scholtz says they “are now coming in and the board has been very incisive and decisive in terms of saying, ‘we need to fix these wrongs and have an approach that is meaningful, authentic, and also within the confines of both the PMFA act and the lotteries act’.”
There are priority funding areas in which they operate. “It’s art, charities, sports & recreation and we have a miscellaneous category that is not covered in each of those,” expounds Scholtz.
“For instance in charity, one of the areas we focus on is gender-based violence. We also have a program around schools and sustainability and nutrition. So there’s a range of areas that we publish each year.”
There is a process that needs to be adhered to where they engage with stakeholders before these funding areas. “For instance, this year we have included anima welfare relations which hadn’t been included previously,” she adds.
To ensure that the funds are not mismanaged, Scholtz notes that they are working with the SIU. “We have appointed a quantity surveyor. We have partnered with the IDC to bring on their engineers so that we can have a proper assessment of some of these properties that have been funds channeled into people’s pockets.”
Responding to Sol’s question on whether all the people who have allegedly missed funds will be held liable, Scholtz revealed that she has “monthly meetings with the SIU”, and has engaged with the NPA because it is “within their scope to look at prosecuting anyone who has been corrupt.”
