The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in Limpopo has questioned the provincial Health Department on its plans to mitigate wasteful expenditure and unlawful awarding of tenders.
Health MEC Dr Phophi Ramathuba and her management team have appeared before SCOPA at the Parliamentary village in Polokwane. A ten-year old multi-million rand infrastructure contract and R9 million irregular expenditure incurred in the last financial year formed part of the committee’s main concerns.
After failing to appear before SCOPA twice due to non-compliance, the Limpopo Department of Health made it on Thursday. SCOPA members raised questions about the R400 million expenditure from the 2011/2012 financial year. SCOPA acting chairperson, Simon Mathe says it is not clear how the R400 million rand was utilised.
“And the R414 million is not clear what kind of advertisement are talking about where and how, there is a letter of intention of removal of expenditure of about R440 million on the financial annual statement without following the proper prescribe processes,” says Mathe.
Ramathuba says the money was spent on infrastructure projects during the 2011/2012 financial year. She says they have written to both the AG and Treasury to request that audit outcomes about the project should be attributed to the Department of Public Works instead.
“R414 million which occurred in 2011-2012 during those financial year was an infrastructure projects that were handed over to public works as an implementing agency is the one that is not providing us with the information to be able to account. It become very difficult if you handed over the clinic and you can’t get the information when you suppose to account to the AG,” says Ramathuba.
SCOPA members also wanted to know why only two officials have faced disciplinary action for irregular expenditure at the department. Committee member Tshilidzi Maraga says she believes that more people were involved in the irregular expenditure.
“We are talking about the huge amount here, we have only two people accused of all this irregular expenditure which is the chief director and the director, MEC can you take us into confidence that indeed there are no other officials who contributed because the amount is too huge it can’t be two officials,” says Maraga.
Another member of the committee, Rudolph Phala questioned the department for not taking action to prevent irregular expenditure.
“Irregular expenditure is a huge problem that we have in government and is usually one of the huge issues that we focus on, why the department did not take effective and appropriate steps to prevent the occurrence of irregular expenditure in the first place,” says Phala.
The department however reiterated that it had a good relationship with the office of the Auditor General. This after SCOPA members questioned the relationship between the two, saying the department always challenges the AG findings.
Editorial Note: The original story did not reflect the MECs response.
