Power FM, Tuesday night

All sorts of issues from maladministration, financial crisis, leadership, etc. But here we are again, we are not discussing progress, we are discussing yet another project that was pulled off because of irregular expenditure. Maybe give us an idea around this Cuba project and what were the issues and what were the gains. Yes, thanks very much. And it's no secret that the Defense Force has been severely underfunded. And this has had a terrible effect on the availability.

Of its what we call prime mission equipment. And so, what the Defence Force decided way back in 2015 already, and in fact, the original agreement was signed in 2012, was that they did a cost-benefit exercise, an exercise which was, I think, the Auditor General found to be quite flawed, where they said that instead of South Africans maintaining

South African design and built equipment, it would be cheaper to pay Cuba to maintain and restore the various army vehicles, transfer skills, and so on. And hence, this, what was originally known as Operation Tisano, was incorporated. And arising from that, over 3 billion rand was spent over the last 10 years.

Years on this. And this included, you know, during COVID-19, 33 million rand was wasted on interferin medication, which was never approved for use in South Africa. And in 2021, the Auditor General made a finding of the regular expenditure for the whole operation Tusana in that the procurement procedures were not followed. And so arising from