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dam-l Asmal letter re: corruption/LS
One wonders how the top official on the LHWP could have been ignorant until
recently of bribery allegations on the project when the top official was
dismissed in 1995.
>From Business Day, 26 August 1999
Do not lead hobbyhorse to water
Dear Sir,
THE article by George Dor (Business Day, August 17) on
the Lesotho
Highlands Water Project conveys some imaginative myths.
He says there was a "significant lobby against Phase 1B"
and he lists
unions, civic, consumer and other organisations, Rand
Water and "even
the water affairs department along with then-minister
Kader Asmal's
own advisers".
There was significant support for going ahead with phase
1B and a
substantial number of those who had doubts had them
allayed. A small
clique of people sought to give the impression that there
was a ground
swell of opposition to the step. It would be useful if
Dor would name
the advisers on my staff who opposed the step for I do
not know of their
existence. The one adviser he may have in mind, after
proposing an
alternative, was prepared fully to agree with Phase 1B.
Despite the present controversy over the bribery
allegations - and I was
not aware of the allegations until shortly before they
were publicised - I
believe that the decisions taken were basically sound and
carried
substantial support in quarters that count. Dor should
not use these
bribery allegations to flog all the other hobbyhorses of
his, including his
antiprivatisation positions.
Kader Asmal MP and Former Water Affairs Minister Cape Town
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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