Auditor-general blasts expenditure

THE Auditor-General, Kimi Makwetu, and Parliament have urged departments and stateowned entities to pull their weight and reduce irregular expenditure, which has ballooned to R46 billion in the 2015/16 financial period.

Makwetu and Parliament called on departments and SOEs to tighten internal controls to rein in irregular expenditure.

Despite the improvement in clean audits across departments and SOEs, the AG remained concerned that more could be done to get things right.

Chairman of the standing committee on the auditor-general, Vincent Smith, and house chairman in the National Council of Provinces, Jomo Nyambi, also warned that departments needed to tighten internal audit controls.

Irregular expenditure dropped from R33bn in the 2013/14 financial year to R26bn in 2014/15, but suddenly shot up to R46bn in the past financial year.

In his report in Parliament, Makwetu identified KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, North West and other national departments as having the highest irregular expenditure.

Smith, who is also a member of the standing committee on public accounts, said they wanted the anti-corruption task team, led by the Hawks, to start charging officials for corruption relating to deviation from normal tender processes.

Smith said it did not make sense for people to simply procure goods and services but to not get value for money.

They wanted departments to account for this irregular expenditure as the money could have been better used for other projects.

Makwetu singled out five entities for the huge increase in irregular expenditure.

In his report, tabled in Parliament, he said the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa had irregular expenditure totalling R13.9bn.

This related to the contracts it signed on the procurement of locomotives. Prasa chairman Popo Molefe has already challenged these contracts in court and wants the Joburg High Court to overturn them.

The Department of Health in KwaZulu-Natal has irregular expenditure of R2.5bn.

This related to, among other spending, the extension of contracts that had expired. The Department of Human Settlements in Gauteng has irregular expenditure of R2.3bn and part of this relates to payments made for irregular contracts.

The Department of Roads and Transport in Gauteng also has irregular expenditure of R2bn.

In Mpumalanga the Health Department had irregular expenditure of R1.9bn.

In these contracts the provincial department did not follow supply chain management procedures.

The Department of Water and Sanitation incurred irregular expenditure of R1.7bn.