PHILLIP NKOSI, Pietersburg | Tuesday
NORTHERN Provinces government has paid almost R1,5m to 83 dead officials – despite warnings that the money was disappearing into thin air.
Provincial Auditor General Steve Lekutle slammed the provinces finance department for the scam in a new report this week, warning that very little of the money had been recovered.
Some officials, he said, continued receiving salaries up to 15 months after they died.
Blaming the irregular payments on ignorance, incompetence and a lack of knowledge by officials who control the provinces R15bn budget, Lekutle said financial officials should urgently be retrained before even more money was lost or wasted.
Incompetence may, however, also have saved the government from losing all the money.
Lekutle said officials forgot to pay the dead peoples pensions out, so government will be able to recover at least some of its losses by deducting the overpayments from pensions.
“In most cases pension payouts had not been made and recoveries are expected to made,” said Lekutles report.
He also warned, however, that financial and password controls on the provinces PERSAL salary system were hopelessly inadequate and allowed officials to defraud the province of R116_000 in just 14 transactions over just two months in 1999.
Even junior officials were, he said, able to forge computer user identification and secret passwords to commit the fraud.
Only R53_657 of the stolen money had been recovered when Lekutle finalised his report in June 1999.
Other fundamental problems included repeated breaches of national treasury and financial regulations, a failure to submit periodic expenditure reports, reconcile government banks accounts, clear suspense accounts or maintain proper records.
Officials also failed link all PERSAL interface tapes, leading to serious discrepancies in the salary system.
Lekutle added that officials also failed to provide documentary proof that budget planning activities met State expenditure guidelines, which budgets were performance based or could be audited.
Northern Provinces legislature public accounts portfolio committee will publicly debate the highly critical report later this year. – African Eye News Service