No paperwork for R807.6m spent
The KZN health department spent R807.6m on overtime, but cannot produce the necessary documents in support of the payments.
|||Durban - The KwaZulu-Natal Health Department spent R807.6 million on overtime in the previous financial year, but cannot produce the necessary documents in support of the payments.
This emerged in a report of the auditor-general (A-G) tabled at the provincial Standing Committee on Public Accounts, sitting at the legislature on tuesday.
The report also said that in the same financial year, the department was sitting with medical negligence claims of R6.72 billion.
There were many other discrepancies found by the A-G on its financial books that officials found hard to explain.
The department, which received a qualified audit opinion for the financial year 2014/2015, ending in March 31 this year, was lambasted for lack of compliance with the legislation with regards to handling tenders.
The A-G report indicated there were no supporting documents for the amount spent on overtime; therefore the A-G could not obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence for commuted overtime expenditure in its financial statements because there was no recorded paperwork.
“I was unable to confirm this expenditure by alternative means. Consequently, I was unable to determine whether any adjustment to commuted overtime, which was included under compensation of employees in the financial statements, was necessary,” read the report.
Among other discrepancies, the A-G was unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence that management had properly valued and accounted for movable assets due to the “poor status” of accounting records in support of these assets.
The department did not disclose all irregular expenditure for conditional grants and therefore the A-G could not determine the full extent of irregular expenditure.
“Effective, efficient and transparent systems of risk management and internal controls with respect to performance information and management were not in place, as required by Section 38(1)(a)(i) of the Public Finance Management Act.
“Goods and services valued below R500 000 were procured without obtaining the required price quotations as required by treasury regulation 16A6.1.
“Competitive bids for tenders above R500 000 were not invited and bid adjudication was not always performed.
“Contracts and quotations were awarded to suppliers whose tax matters had not been declared by the South African Revenue Services to be in order,” the report said.
Responding to the issues flagged by the A-G, department head Dr Sifiso Mtshali acknowledged that his department had been faced with numerous claims arising from alleged patient negligence, professional misconduct, and supply chain management issues, breach of contracts, lease matters and labour issues, among others.
The department conceded that these claims were an indication that weaknesses in service delivery, systems, compliance to prescripts and policies resulting in a year-on-year increase in the number of claims lodged against the institution, existed.
“The overtime issue is being addressed by the department. Employees are paid overtime even if they ended up not going to work on the particular day they were supposed to have worked. We have rosters where individuals are marked for overtime duties.
“If a doctor is marked for weekend duty, that person will definitely drop his or her plans, be it trips or visits.
“If, in that weekend there was no emergency for the person to be called up, the person will still be paid because of the time they had set aside for possible duty calls,” Mtshali said.
He committed to increasing the monitoring of commuted overtime to ensure that contracts were entered into and were completed with all requisite information, as well as to ensure that all payments made were supported by valid contracts.
Mtshali said there were instances where there were no contracts in place leading to deviations after approval by the chief financial officer based on the motivation submitted. These deviations were recorded in the deviations register.
Finance portfolio committee chairman, Sipho “KK” Nkosi, said it was embarrassing to have a department qualifying for the same issues that were raised the previous financial year.
“The issues flagged by the A-G are old, they were flagged before and the department has not made any changes.
“The department lacks monitoring and people do as they wish. Of great concern is the failure to produce supporting documents on this massive amount of money spent on overtime. They say they will investigate and we will be waiting for the results,” Nkosi said.
Health portfolio committee member, Jomo Sibiya, called for “disobedient” department officials to be shown the door.
Daily News
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