At least six government departments were red-flagged for underspending or slow spending of money allocated for key programmes like substance abuse and policing by December, a Treasury official said at Parliament on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“This is an indictment on us,” said Deputy Director General of the Public Finance Committee in the Treasury, Donda Mogajane.<\/p>\n
“You have got money lying idle,” he told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations, in a briefing on government spending up to the third quarter of the 2015\/16 financial period – the end of December.<\/p>\n
If the money is underspent, or spent at too slow a pace, the Treasury reclaims the money. But to avoid losing the money, some departments shift it to other programmes to keep it inhouse – and thus keep it from going back to the Treasury.<\/p>\n
The practice of virements – or more crudely “fiscal dumping” – meant the money was not being used for the programmes they were intended for by the end of December – the third quarter of the 2015\/16 financial year.<\/p>\n
For example, according to the National Treasury’s third quarter expenditure report, the Department of Health spent only R2.8 million (5.8%) of the R47.5 million allocated for the substance abuse treatment grant.<\/p>\n
‘Vacancies are costing us’<\/strong><\/p>\n This was partly caused by provinces being late with\u00a0submissions of progress reports and financial statements needed for compliance. The health department has asked Treasury for a new payment schedule for this.<\/p>\n The Department of Communications spent only 5.5% of the R352.6 million allocated for the move to broadband by the end of December, due to delays in a decision over service providers, Mogajane said.<\/p>\n The hold-up was because of a flurry of legal opinions flying between the lawyers of interested parties over who should get contracts to roll out out fast internet connections between 5 000 government offices in eight district municipalities.<\/p>\n “Broadband roll-out is very slow and the department is not coming to the party as we expected them to,” he said.<\/p>\n At the same time, the Treasury still wanted procurement processes to be done properly.<\/p>\n Another example was the vacancy rate of 9 413 posts in the SA Police Service at the end of December, caused by a combination of vacancies not being filled and a need to make up the money for the 2015 salary increase.<\/p>\n In the police, there were 3 634 vacancies in visible policing, and 2 514 in detective services – core programmes within the department.<\/p>\n “Vacancies are costing us because you have locked in money there that you cannot spend in other programmes.”<\/p>\n Mogajane said Treasury could understand certain circumstances where spending was not in line with planning – the extra money spent to quell the xenophobic attacks last year, for example.<\/p>\n But when people resigned, he said, the replacement process\u00a0was supposed to start\u00a0as soon as\u00a0a resignation letter was accepted.<\/p>\n ‘Come to the party’<\/strong><\/p>\n He said officials found that department employees were sometimes afraid to start the process in case they were accused of irregular expenditure on job advertisements for example, so money lay idle.<\/p>\n The Independent Police Investigative Authority had 51 vacant posts – mostly due to delays in vetting by the State Security Agency. Ipid hoped that doing this function in-house would alleviate the problem.<\/p>\n Concerned MPs on the Standing Committee on Appropriations wanted representatives from these and other departments to come to Parliament to tell them why they were slow to spend the money.<\/p>\n The Treasury also wanted the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) to “come to the party” and hurry up with verifying the costs of drought relief because farmers needed it desperately.<\/p>\n Eskom was also fingered for not spending the money set aside for the delivery of solar geysers. It was asked to give the money back, but decided to have a fresh look at the programme.<\/p>\n Not all departments were slow to part with their money.<\/p>\n The Department of Defence had already gone over budget by the end of December – spending R31.9 billion of their scheduled drawings of R31.4 billion. This was mainly because of salary increases.<\/p>\n News24<\/a><\/p>\n How much money the SA government blows on travel every year<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Corruption is ruining South Africa\u2019s democracy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Corruption has no place in government: Zuma<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Biggest wasteful spenders in SA government<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n