The National Solar Water Heater (NSWH) programme of the Department of Minerals and Energy (DMRE) that is meant to install 5 million units in households by 2030 hit a snag on the first 82 000 units.
This as R324 million in fruitless and wasted expenditure was accrued from extensive storage costs. while many units have been stolen or vandalised in municipal and government facilities.
Updating Parliaments Portfolio Committee on Energy and Electricity, the director-general at the DMRE, Jacob Mbele, and chief director for programmes and projects management office, Elizabeth Marabwa, said the department was currently reviewing the responses of officials implicated in a KPMG investigation into the fruitless and wasteful expenditure, which accumulated after 2022 when the department claims to have controlled the high storage costs.
They said the DMRE was also engaged in legal battle with some of the contracted manufacturers to recover more than 13 000 units in dispute for either storage costs or poor quality.
The storage costs have been accrued from the units being kept with the manufacturers for more than six years, while the department went through the initiating processes resulting in over R100m annual expenditure, which the DMRE said it had capped in 2022 by moving the units.
