Dirty audits still dog state departments

Despite promises to clean up their finances, state departments are still racking up millions of rands in irregular expenditure.

The annual reports of 15 government departments and state entities tabled in parliament in the past month reveal that departments' audits are little improved despite their promises that they would achieve clean audits this year.

Home Affairs achieved its first clean audit in 16 years but Public Works has been dogged by qualified audits since 2008.

This year it hit a new low when the auditor-general, Terence Nombembe, attached a disclaimer to his audit - the worst audit result possible.

The Department of Labour received a negative audit opinion from Nombembe in 2009-2010 and this year after running up R3.3-million in irregular expenditure. Nombembe said he was uncertain whether the department's R144-million list of assets was complete, and even if all the assets listed existed.

Rural Development and Land Reform got its second consecutive qualified audit, as did Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, whose minister, Sicelo Shiceka, has been on sick leave for the past 10 months. It racked up R420-million in irregular expenditure.

"Also, the department failed to spend R117-million of its budget, a portion of which was supposed to support life-line jobs in the community works programme," complained DA MP James Lorimer.

Correctional Services got its 10 th negative audit in a row, sparking fury from the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union .

The union's deputy general secretary, Lebogang Phepheng, called on parliament this week to put the department under administration. He said officials whose "deplorable" financial practices resulted in "perennial" negative audit opinions must be fired.

Justice got its sixth consecutive qualified audit. This year, Nombembe was unable to verify that the R306.6-million in the Third Party fund had been properly collected and recorded, and said the department's stated irregular expenditure of R81-million might not be complete.

The SABC also got another qualified audit.

The National Prosecuting Authority has had two qualified audits in a row since 2008 - in one case for R560-million in irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure. But this year's annual report showed an improvement, with the NPA earning an almost clean audit though there was R61-million in irregular expenditure.

Human Settlements got a clean audit last year but blotted its copy-book this year .

For the second year in a row, the police, and Higher Education and Training, received almost clean audits.

But Higher Education underspent its National Skills Fund money for the third time in a row - by R2.39-billion.