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The Prime Minister of the Eastern Cape, Oscar Mabuyane.
- According to the Eastern Cape government, not all parts of the ICT strategy signed by Prime Minister Oscar Mabuyane were plagiarized.
- The strategy has been retired and an instruction has been sent for a new one to be developed.
- Mabuyane’s office says it is exploring systems to make sure it is easy to spot plagiarized documents.
The Eastern Cape government is facing a plagiarism scandal after content of an ICT strategy was found to have been copied and pasted from another document.
And now a disciplinary action is looming for all those who participated in the lifting of the content of the document.
As a result, approval of the strategy by the executive council was withdrawn after confirmation that parts of it were plagiarized, the province said in a statement.
the Daily dispatch reported on Saturday that the 33-page “Provincial Digital Transformation Framework and Strategic Plan 2020-2025” was almost a copy and paste of what was signed by former Australian Labor Party leader Brendan Howlin five years ago.
The newspaper also reported that the document had been signed by the director general of the provincial cabinet, Mbulelo Sogoni, and Prime Minister Oscar Mabuyane.
According to the provincial government, the only thing that was not plagiarized was the implementation plan, the projects to be implemented and the location of the projects to be implemented as part of the strategy.
READ | NWU Finds Evidence of Plagiarism Against Two Staff Members, Ten Released
He said that when information about the plagiarized document came to Mabuyane’s attention, he ordered an investigation to investigate the matter.
Investigation
“When the plagiarism was confirmed by the investigation, on the instruction of Prime Minister Mabuyane, the strategy document was withdrawn from all government institutions where it was submitted as required by the government’s operating and reporting systems,” the province said in the release dated October 9. .
During an executive council meeting a decision was made to withdraw the ICT strategy from the records of the executive council, its committees, forums, structures and other government institutions.
The council ordered that a new ICT strategy of the provincial government be developed with due orientation and attention to the processes, as well as the content of the document and the teams that worked on the strategy to avoid a repeat of this embarrassing situation, said the province .
“Disciplinary measures will be taken against the people who plagiarized this document because plagiarism is an act of misconduct, dishonesty and, in this case, has discredited the provincial government.”
And now Mabuyane’s office was exploring systems to ensure that plagiarized documents were easily collected, the provincial government said.
