Scopa hearings start again

The Legislature’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) held a marathon sitting on Tuesday to finish hearings for four departments.
Democratic Alliance Provincial Leader Jacques Smalle said the hearing for the Department of Coorperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs was postponed due to the poor manner in which written answers to questions posed to the department were answered.
The department’s irregular expenditure for the 2014/15 financial year amounted to R8,8 million and the department in its answers said nobody could be held accountable for certain irregular expenses. Scopa did not accept this, saying certain decisions were taken by certain officials and it wanted the names of those officials responsible for the decisions.
The Office of the Premier was rapped on the knuckles due to the regression of departments in the province.
The Department of Agriculture in the financial year of 2014/15 incurred irregular expenditure of R24,7 million. According to Smalle Scopa requested a report on legal outstanding legal issues, as the department has not declared all its legal obligations or possible liabilities. One court case pertaining to abattoirs built in Lebowakgomo amounted to a possible R1,5 billion liability. Irregular expenditure was mostly incurred by poor management of the supply chain management system and lack of monitoring of compliance with applicable laws and regulations. One contract was queried and a detailed report requested from the department.
Department of Health’s report kept the Scopa members busy for a long period of time. Smalle informed that their R544 million of irregular expenditure was mostly found to be due to infrastructure contracts of which were not advertised for the prerequisite time of 21 days before awarded at the end of the financial year.
The department also wanted to put blame on the department of Public Works, an en­deavour rejected by Scopa and ascribed to poor planning by the department itself.
Contracts to the value of R20,6 million were closed with contractors whose tax matters were not in order, R1,6 million’s contracts were allocated to government officials, R12,9 million’s contracts allocated involved no competitive bidding processes and R178 million’ contracts were not allocated according to the points system of preferred bidders
Names of the responsible persons were not supplied to Scopa. The department is also involved in court cases comprising liabilities of around R610 million. The department’s huge current budget deficit and increased bank overdraft was also discussed at the hearing.
The Departments of Social Development and Transport and Community Safety will appear before Scopa today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday) it will be the Limpopo Gambling Board, Limpopo Economic Development Agency and the Limpopo Tourism Agency’s turns to account before Scopa.

Story: NELIE ERASMUS
>>nelie.observer@gmail.com