MPs fed up with DMV's missing answers

MPs have accused the Department of Military Veterans (DMV) of ignoring Parliament's questions, after the department failed to provide monthly reports it promised on a court order.

At Wednesday's Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans meeting, acting chair Mike Hala asked members to let Ambassador Thami Mseleku answer their questions in writing within seven days.

DA MP Chris Hattingh agreed reluctantly.

"I'm not entirely comfortable with your proposal, but I will go with it reluctantly, as long as we can get a guarantee from Ambassador Mseleku that within seven days we will receive his responses. We have had many situations where we've been given promises of regular reports, of reports within seven working days. This Department of Military Veterans, and the DOD in general, continues to fail us on this," he said.

Hattingh said the department had promised in June to report monthly on the court order.

"We haven't received any. This is where the accounting officer should come and explain why a decision of this committee, agreed to by the department, was simply ignored," he continued.

Mseleku promised written answers by Sunday, 15 November.

"I commit that, together with the BRRR responses, we will respond to each and every question here. I made that commitment personally, and I will make sure it happens," he said.

DA MP Emma Powell said she had stopped seeing answers.

"In every meeting we have concluded over the last few months, there have been questions that have been unanswered, sometimes very many of them. We have been given an undertaking that responses will be provided to us within seven days. I have not seen responses coming in to any of the outstanding questions of late," Powell said.

Motshekga has also asked the committee to defer next week's meeting on the Department of Defence's irregular expenditure register and boards of inquiry. She said too little time had passed since the last update.

Instead, the committee added a review of all outstanding answers and the department's BRRR responses to next week's agenda. Hala said the minister would attend.