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A-G paints a bleak picture of provinces

MANY provincial government departments are not managing their money well, according to Auditor-General Terence Nombembe

Nombembe's audits of provincial government departments were released one by one last year, but yesterday was the first time he released an overall picture of the provinces.

Low points included Nombembe's finding that the Mpumalanga education department had wasted a massive 93 percent of its budget - R134 million out of R145 million - on irregular expenditure.

The number of completely clean provincial audits increased from four in 2009 to 14 last year.

But 10 provincial departments got the most negative audit opinion - a disclaimer - up from four the year before.

The Eastern Cape's health and education departments got disclaimers for not obeying the law, not providing the correct information, and for providing unreliable information to Nombembe.

In Mpumalanga's health department, Nombembe found that government officials and close family members of the officials had interests in companies supplying the department.

Neither the officials nor the suppliers declared the interests to the government.

The Free State health and education departments were plagued by high vacancy rates. Senior management posts were not advertised within six months and were left vacant for more than a year.

Limpopo's health and education departments, and the Northern Cape's health department had the same problems.

The only major improvement happened in Western Cape, where all 13 government departments improved on their previous audit findings.

But even in Western Cape, Nombembe found R70 million of unauthorised expenditure in the provincial health department.

Eastern Cape ran up more than R2billion of irregular expenditure in its education and health departments.

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