The official opposition Democratic Alliance is to call on Auditor General Shauket Fakie to carry out a forensic audit of housing departments in all the provinces and at national level.
Standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) DA member Eddie Trent said national and provincial housing officials were unable to account for irregularities involving more than R300-million in housing subsidies.
”The DA also believes that provincial housing departments should account directly to their respective public accounts committees for the irregularities highlighted by the Auditor General, and report on: whether any investigations are occurring in relation to the matter; the status of those investigations; and the steps taken to recoup losses.”
The Auditor General’s report, released in January this year, found that as at March 2004, 53 426 subsidies worth R323-million had been granted irregularly or fraudulently.
He noted that Scopa had on Wednesday called on the housing department director general to brief the committee on what steps were being put in place to recoup lost funds and to reform the subsidy allocation procedure.
Trent said: ”The responses provided by both the provincial housing departments and the national Department of Housing were woefully inadequate. In particular, the fact that provincial housing officials were able to override rejections of applications by the national housing department has not been adequately explained, and must be attended to urgently.
”It is unacceptable that some housing officials display a breathtaking unwillingness to take responsibility for their sins of commission and omission.
”More information needs to be provided on efforts to bring perpetrators of fraudulent activities to justice and on adjustments to the application process that will prevent this scale of fraud from occurring in the housing subsidy programme in future,” said Trent.
Trent argued that Minister of Housing Lindiwe Sisulu should shoulder political responsibility for what he described as a morass, and provide clear direction on how she intended to rectify the situation.
”In this regard, the Department of Housing has been requested by Scopa to provide a detailed progress report on the work of the ministerial joint steering committee, which was set up in November last year to deal with the issues raised by the Auditor General, and has only met once since then.” — I-Net Bridge