Pravin Gordhan must enforce the PFMA
Finance minister Pravin Gordhan must enforce the regulations of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) consistently and should have done so far earlier than in the case of Limpopo.
Questions can legitimately be asked about why the PFMA only started being enforced in Limpopo when Premier Cassel Mathale decided to take on President Zuma.
It is clear from this morning's briefing that officials in Limpopo have for years been allowed to circumvent the PFMA without action being taken by the National Treasury or the provincial government.
Why did the National Treasury remain silent when R1.5 billion worth of unauthorized expenditure was identified in Limpopo as early as 2009?
This inaction has led to the complete collapse of Limpopo's public service infrastructure. This should serve as a lesson to government.
Minister Gordhan must now target serially offending Departments in other provinces as well, where the same shocking levels of corruption and mismanagement can be found.
Given that the total irregular expenditure in provinces has reached R16.8 billion in 2010/11, the failure to act has clearly reached crisis proportions.
As a result we are writing to the Minister to call on him to:
- put monitoring systems in place to ensure that departments are instituting the required disciplinary and criminal proceedings on an annual basis when irregular and unauthorized expenditure is found by the Auditor-General;
- issue a directive to accounting officers in all public entities that they will face misconduct charges for negligence if they fail to implement proceedings as required by the PFMA; and
- ensure that executive authorities in all public entities report to the relevant Treasury accounting officials on the enforcement of the financial misconduct measures of the PFMA on a regular basis.
In the PFMA, South Africa has a progressive law in place to prevent mismanagement and corruption. What is required now is a sustained commitment by government to ensure that another crisis mirroring Limpopo does not happen in the future.
Statement issued by James Lorimer MP, DA Shadow Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, January 19 2012
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