Almost half of provincial health departments’ infrastructure projects contravene procurement and contracting procedures, MPs heard on Thursday.
This emerged from the auditor general’s audit performance of the national health department and its nine provincial departments.
The AG cited a lack of project supervision as the major contributor to the department’s poor audit performance for the 2010/11 financial year.
Briefing the health portfolio committee, senior manager performance in the AG’s office, Corie Pretorius, said over 40% of provincial health departments’ infrastructure projects contravened procurement and contracting procedures.
He cited instances where a single contractor received contracts for multiple projects.
“In other provinces you have contractors being awarded multiple contracts which end up collapsing because the contractors have bitten off more than they could chew.
“This incurred more costs when other contractors had to be called in to complete the job,” Pretorius said.
This happened when government officials meddled in the awarding of tenders.
“In some instances contracts are given to family members or friends or government officials are directors of these companies.”
All of this was due to a lack of effective monitoring by the accounting officers and without corrective action the situation would get worse, he said.
Committee chairperson Bevan Goqwana said the committee was disturbed about “this status quo”.
“It is untenable that a department with a R6-billion infrastructure budget has accounting officers who allow these kinds of practices to unfold without acting against them.
“As this committee, we demand greater control of affairs by heads of department. They need to be hands-on and provide regular progress reports on all projects undertaken,” he said.
The committee was also concerned about the time taken to complete some projects.
“It can’t be right when a contract scheduled to take about two years ends up taking seven, at a cost of R537-million compared to the R256-million initially budgeted for,” Goqwana said.
A case in point, was a hospital in Soweto where work began in 2003 and dragged on until 2010.
The committee wanted these matters to be handled with the utmost urgency, Goqwana said. — Sapa