Durban - Government departments in KwaZulu-Natal have recorded close to R50 billion in cumulative irregular expenditure over the past four financial years.
Chairperson of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) Maggie Govender revealed this while tabling the Scopa report on the state of government institutions recently.
“The Mercury” understands from committee members that this was accumulated over the past four financial years.
Govender said while there were some government departments that were improving, irregular expenditure was still a serious challenge.
Irregular expenditure means government money was spent without following process. It could be as a result of negligence on the part of the officials or it could be as a result of processes being deliberately circumvented for the purposes of corruption.
Govender said her committee had recently held meetings with government departments and entities to determine the progress that has been made to address the audit findings by the office of the auditor-general from previous years.
She said during the meeting that they had identified areas of concern including irregular expenditure.
“We met with the provincial Treasury in April 2022 to talk about the state of irregular expenditure in the province and to look at progress made in the condonation process.
“Irregular expenditure is a matter of great concern and the cumulative balance of irregular expenditure for all provincial departments as of March 31, 2021, was R48.256bn.”
She said as of March this year, 14 departments had submitted condonation requests to the value of R13bn in regard to some of the expenditure.
DA leader Francois Rodgers said it was understood that not all irregular expenditure can be labelled as corrupt transactions or fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
However he said the requests for condonation and write-offs as at March of this year from departments amounted to just over R17bn. These requests from departments will provide documents on the transactions deemed irregular in order to be granted a condonation for the amount or it being written off.
“Over R30bn remains as irregular expenditure in the province of KZN. You have to ask yourself why R30bn remains as irregular expenditure in the province of KZN. It leaves more questions than answers. Could it be that departments do not have the necessary supporting documents and a paper trail to support a claim for write-off or for condonation or perhaps there is something more sinister.
“The reality is there is no political will to enforce consequence through legislation; senior officials face no consequence for compliance failures. Where are the members of the executive in this, why are they not demanding compliance within their departments?” said Rodgers.