Poor spending threatens NC’s Covid-19 readiness
23 July 2020
Provincial government’s dismal spending of disaster funds received in April 2020, is clearly reflected in the province’s failure to set up an effective Covid-19 response. This has prompted the Democratic Alliance (DA) to call on Premier Zamani Saul in conjunction with the newly appointed MEC of Health, Maruping Lekwene, to ensure that spending of yesterday’s newly tabled emergency budget, particularly for health care, be urgently prioritised.
The fact that the Northern Cape spent only R1 million of an additional R6, 2 million, that had been allocated for the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators in April already, was reported during a parliamentary briefing by the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department on Tuesday.
What they revealed is disconcerting but not surprising.
In general, the provincial Health Department is a department that easily diverts funds towards corrupt activities while failing to spend on actual health care. In fact, the Auditor-General found that in the previous financial year, this department significantly underspent on the procurement of equipment. Yet, at the same time, we see a situation whereby the Hawks are investigating a R500 million case involving falsification of documents, price fixing, conflicts of interest, quotation forgery, VAT and income tax fraud, circumvention of open bid and tender processes, overriding of internal controls, exploitation of the sundry payments system, extreme deviation from supply chain management processes, fruitless and wasteful expenditure and unauthorised and irregular expenditure.