MBOMBELA – “To fight corruption we must deal with the private sector as well as the public sector, because the private sector continues to corrupt our officials,” according to MEC for finance, Mr Eric Kholwane.
He was speaking during a legislature sitting on Tuesday at which MPLs voted to approve the provincial government’s proposed budgets. He also took officials to task over the reports they had received from the Auditor General last year. The audit outcomes for departments in the 2013/14 financial year, were issued on July 31.
Only the departments of finance, social development and cooperative governance, as well as the Mpumalanga Gambling Board and Mpumalanga Regional Training Trust, received clean audit reports.
“We should start talking about disclaimers. People don’t understand that it is the worst outcome you can get – it means you don’t exist.”
The chairman of the portfolio committee on the premier’s office and economic development, Mr Pat Ngomane, also presented the committee’s report on the budgets. Ngomane noted that the spending of conditional grants was too slow.
The committee recommended that departments address the outstanding bills they had accumulated due to not spending their budgets according to their annual performance plans in 2013/14.
Ngomane said education and cooperative governance were showing warning signs on their accruals while agriculture and culture had hugely underspent in the first quarter of this financial year.
