MBOMBELA – The provincial health department just can’t seem to shake off the burden past debt has placed on its finances. This was again made evident this week when the provincial executive announced after a lekgotla that the department had to urgently accelerate clearing its accruals.
In a statement following the lekgotla, the premier’s spokesman, Mr Zibonele Mncwango said the executive had also warned it to deal with high litigation costs; the exorbitant amounts were due to negligence by its officials.
Accrued debt has shackled the department, which was briefly placed under the curatorship of finance MEC Mr Eric Kholwane in 2014, for a long time. Kholwane said at the time that it was still paying invoices dating back to 2011/12.
Upon enquiry the spokesman for the department, Mr Dumisani Malamule this week said their turnaround strategy to address the accruals involved the HOD, Dr Aggrey Morake meeting with management on a monthly basis to review budget expenditure, inputs and needs. They will also establish district budget committees and submit all quarterly reports to the provincial treasury.
“An implementable checklist, to be attached to invoices to ensure payment documents are complete, is also being developed. Training of appointed officials who will reconcile invoices received will also be conducted.”
The department will determine a central point for receipt of all invoices and implement invoice-receipt registers. “It will delegate responsible officials to populate the register, distribute the invoices to the relevant programme managers and follow-up on outstanding invoices.”
The executive council also instructed the department to start using an electronic filing system instead of the paper-based one in hospitals, since the latter resulted in the disappearance of information which greatly contributed to the litigation faced by the department.
