The province of KwaZulu-Natal has failed to handle its finances properly resulting in irregular spending to the tune of R11 billion. The state of the finances of the provincial government was laid bare during the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) session at the provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg.
The report paints a picture that key vacancies such as Chief Financial Officer and other top posts are not filled resulting in contravention of supply chain management, under expenditure and irregular expenditure.
KwaZulu-Natal is failing to spend its allocation from the Treasury because there are no qualified people employed in key positions. Scopa is urging departments to get their house in order by hiring appropriate staff to spend public funds to deliver services.
A Scopa report has revealed that there is a shortage of key staff.
“The irregular spending for 2018/2019 is R11, 421 billion. If you are to look at the collective figure remember I said if not investigated it would amount to R41, 8 billion. It means that people didn’t follow the correct procedures in terms of contract management, there wasn’t transparency in tendering. Also, there is a bug issue around local content because we said we want transformation, government has passed legislation which says when you tender there must be a certain percentage of local content so that is in the form of goods, skills and whatever. And we found that not a single government department complied with that,” says KwaZulu-Natal Scopa Chairperson Maggie Govender.
Govender added that the committee will enlist the help of the Special Investigation Unit to make sure that the offending departments are quickly turned around.
“Our job is to ensure that recommendations are followed where people have not complied with the management of public finances they are held to account and there are these investigations. The SIU report to the president we accept that but there are provincial departments that have been affected by SIU investigations we welcome those, Department of Transport, Department of Public Works, Department of Agriculture and the provincial Treasury these are four departments what we would like to hear from them, if they have completed their investigations because, after that, that ought to be public. What were their recommendations so that we as Scopa can track to ensure that whatever emanates from these reports is followed up.”
Meanwhile, Govender says government will work harder to ensure that critical vacant positions are filled in order to reverse the scourge of irregular and underspending by government departments.
“What we are really worried about though is the under expenditure in the province that’s linked directly to not having the necessary warm bodies in positions, the vacancies, the reasons that were provided is that the recruitment process is long. We felt there should be consequence management, we can’t understand why those posts weren’t advertised on time. “
