Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu says his office’s audit of the government’s multi-billion rand Covid-19 relief efforts has produced ‘frightening findings’.
Releasing the first in a series of audit reports yesterday, Makwetu said: ‘A lot of the effort that we put into this on the detection side of things has revealed a number of frightening findings that require to be followed up very quickly so that there is no significant passage of time before the required actions are implemented.’
The information assembled by his office would now be handed over to the government’s ‘agency fusion centre’, tasked with investigating Covid-19-related fraud and corruption, according to an EWN report.
Moneyweb reported that in addition to payments to deceased people, duplicate payments and overpayments in the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) Covid-19 Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters), the Auditor-General’s report also flagged government officials applying for and benefiting from the scheme.
The audit was ordered by President Cyril Ramaphosa to track how Covid-19 relief funds were spent.
Following the release of the report, Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi announced the suspension of senior UIF executives, including the organisation’s commissioner Teboho Maruping, CFO Vuya Mafata, COO Judith Kumbi, and head of supply chain management Maria Ramoshaba.
EWN reported that Makwetu’s teams focused on the R147.4 billion specially budgeted for Covid-19 relief, including support for businesses and employees, social relief of distress grants and the procurement of personal protective equipment and other goods and services. The audit covers spending from the start of lockdown in April to the end of July.
The report cited Makwetu as saying that that some government IT systems were unable to cope with the new demands on them, while pre-existing problems with supply chain processes, such as a lack of internal controls and fraudulent activity, were made worse.
Moneyweb reported that, of the R68.9 billion in spending covered in the initial report, the biggest portion (about R57 billion) related to disbursements made as part of the UIF Ters scheme and Sassa social grants payments.
‘The Ters benefit, the social distress grant and the top-up of existing social grants were introduced to provide economic relief to the vulnerable and assist employers to protect jobs,’ Makwetu noted in a statement.
‘By July 31, the UIF had paid just over R37 billion in Ters benefits and Sassa had paid R19.6 billion in social grants.’
Makwetu said that the UIF and Sassa had to make significant changes in their processes and systems within a very short period to enable these pay-outs, without ensuring that good preventative controls were in place.
‘All of this increased the risk of payments to beneficiaries that are not eligible, overpayments, underpayments, the invalid rejection of beneficiaries, fraud and double-dipping.
‘The lack of validation, integration and sharing of data across government platforms resulted in people – including government officials – receiving benefits and grants they were not entitled to,’ he said.
On social relief grants paid by Sassa, the audit report said the team’s data analytics flagged payments to over 30 000 beneficiaries that required further investigation.
‘These include payments to beneficiaries employed in government or that received other sources of income such as other social grants, government pension, UIF payments and benefits from other relief funds. The databases that Sassa used are also outdated and could have led to the rejection of applicants that should have received the grant.’
Positive cases in South Africa grew yesterday by 2 336 to a cumulative total of 630 595 (with 553 456 recoveries). Deaths rose by 126 to 14 389.
The highest tally of cases is in Gauteng (211 157), followed by KwaZulu-Natal (113 661), the Western Cape (106 353) and the Eastern Cape (86 322).