The latest Auditor-General’s report showing soaring irregular and wasteful spending showed the government’s tough talk on cleaning up its act was ‘nothing more than hot air’, according to Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Haniff Hoosen.
Hoosen, the DA’s shadow minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, said in a statement that ‘despite the sorry state of our economy and joblessness, national departments continue to squander money without a shred of accountability’.
He was responding to the release of Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu’s annual report, which showed that irregular government spending grew by more than R10 billion in a year, from R51 billion to R62.6 billion.
Hoosen said: ‘The 1 percentage-point increase in clean audits from 25% to 26% nationally is, unfortunately, nothing to celebrate as it is a stark reminder that the majority of departments are completely incapable of managing the people of South Africa’s money properly. This is compounded by the fact that the Auditor-General’s report revealed that budget expenditure on key programs such as health, school infrastructure, public works and housing stands at 95%, yet none of their targets have been met.
‘Fat-cat officials’ were ‘recklessly abusing the public coffers through irregular expenditure’ while communities were deprived of projects and infrastructure they so desperately deserved.
Hoosen added: ‘To make matters worse, not a single state-owned entity received a clean audit. This begs the question why the government continues to waste public money on bailing out entity after entity when they cannot be trusted to utilise the monies effectively?’
By contrast, he said, the ‘DA-run Western Cape has once again delivered clean governance results. Fifteen auditees received a clean audit outcome, of which 13 retained their clean audit outcome from the previous year. The Auditor-General went so far as to commend the political and administrative leadership of the province for this noteworthy achievement.’