A heavyweight government salvage team has been sent into the Department of Home Affairs to rectify the financial disarray graphically detailed in a recent report by Auditor General Shauket Fakie.
The task team, comprising senior officials from the Department of Home Affairs, the National Treasury and the Department of Public Service and Administration, began its work on July 1 and has a time-frame of six months.
It consists of the Director General of Home Affairs, Mzuvukile Maqetuke; the Director General in the Treasury, Lesetja Kganyago; the Director General in the Department of Public Service, Richard Levin; the Director General in the Public Service Commission, Odette Ramsingh; and the accountant general in the Treasury, Freeman Nomvulo.
The intervention of the task team came at the request of the Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula in her budget vote to Parliament on May 30.
After the release of Fakie’s damning audit report, which was not only qualified but added a disclaimer, Mapisa-Nqakula asked the Treasury to intervene in terms of Chapter 2 of the Public Finance Management Act.
This provides that “Treasury may assist departments and constitutional institutions in building their capacity … Treasury is empowered to investigate any system of financial management and internal control in any department.”
Mapisa-Nqakula has also recently received a special report by the Human Sciences Research Council detailing the extent of the department’s woes. It found, for example, that 1,5-million people eligible for the green bar-coded identity documents — required for voting — did not have them.
Fakie’s report contains a litany of financial contraventions that include malfunctioning accounting systems, ineffective debt collection and chaotic document recording.
The department, for example, failed to provide documentary proof of R572-million spent on goods and services.
It also failed to submit financial statements for the immigrants bank account, which in March last year held a balance of R240-million. Certain foreigners entering the country are required to deposit a certain amount into this bank account, which is repaid to them if they comply with the conditions of their stay.
Fakie also found that the department had paid R66,4-million to the Gauteng department of public transport and roads for vehicles, when only 455 of the 599 vehicles were delivered.
The Department of Home Affairs was supposed to table its annual report by the end of September 2005, but only managed to do so in March this year because of the financial chaos.
Cleo Mosana, spokesperson for the department, said the task team would focus on, among other things, “leadership and management, human resources capacity, service delivery improvement … accounting service, and risk management”.
The task team’s intervention in a national department has no precedent. At provincial level, it is matched only by the 2003 intervention of “interim management team” — comprising national Treasury and Department of Public Service officials — in the Eastern Cape to rescue the province from bankruptcy.
Mapisa-Nqakula took over the ministerial reins from the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Mangosuthu Buthelezi two years ago, but has failed to resolve the long-standing crisis in the department. She recently made headlines for her controversial management of the deportation of Pakistani national Khalid Rashid.
Last month the department denied reports that it had stopped issuing new passports because it had run out of paper.
The vacancy rate in the department is conservatively estimated at 20%, a figure that has not improved in five years. In April last year director general Barry Gilder left the department, the fourth to do so in six years. His turn-around strategy for the department, launched in 2003, ground to a halt.
Fraud and corruption continue to dog the department. During Fakie’s audit, 12 home affairs employees were suspended on suspicion of fraud. Fakie is currently conducting a forensic investigation into alleged fraud and corruption in the department.
Questions to the Treasury and the Department of Public Service on the task team’s powers were referred to the Department of Home Affairs. However, it is known that its recommendations will be binding and that the Treasury and the Department of Public Service will assist in implementing them.