Accounting Officers need to exercise thorough supervision over infrastructure development projects, says Dr Bevan Goqwana, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Health.
This follows a report by the Auditor-General’s office on the audit performance of the National Department of Health and its nine provincial departments where lack of project supervision was cited as the major contributor in the Department’s poor audit performance for the 2010-11 financial year.
Mr Corie Pretorius, Senior Manager Performance in the AG’s office said that procurement and contracting of more than 40% of infrastructure projects conducted by provincial departments of health contravened procurement procedures. He cited instances where a single contractor received contracts for multiple projects.
“In other provinces you have contractors being awarded multiple contracts which end up collapsing because the contractors have bitten off more than they could chew. This incurred more costs when other contractors had to be called in to complete the job,” Mr Pretorius said.
Mr Pretorius said this happened when government officials meddled in the awarding of tenders. “In some instances contracts are given to family members or friends or government officials are directors of these companies.”
All of this was due to lack of effective monitoring by the accounting officers and without corrective action the situation would get worse.
The committee was disturbed about this status quo. “It is untenable that a Department with a R6-billion infrastructure budget has Accounting Officers who allow these kinds of practices to unfold without acting against them. As this committee, we demand greater control of affairs by heads of department. They need to be hands-on and provide regular progress reports on all projects undertaken” said Dr Goqwana.
Also of grave concern to the committee was the time taken to complete some projects.
“It can’t be right when a contract scheduled to take about two years ends up taking seven, at a cost of R537-million compared to the R256-million initially budgeted for. The case in point is a hospital in Soweto where work begun in 2003 dragged on until 2010” explained Dr Goqwana.
“Although we appreciate the appointment of the Chief Financial Officer and the will displayed by the Department’s new Director-General to turn around the department, we want these matters to be addressed expeditiously. The Department must ensure that at all levels, these issues are handled with the utmost urgency,” added Dr Goqwana.
The Committee also learnt that the Health sector was the worst performing, out of ten departments comprising National Department of Health and nine provincial departments. Only the Western Cape and North West provinces received clean bills of health from the Auditor-General (AG).
On Thursday 20 October 2011 the committee will engage the department on this when the annual report is discussed.
For media enquiries or interviews with the Chairperson, please contact:
Temba Gubula (Mr)
Phone: +27 (0) 21 403 8307
Fax: +27 (0) 21 403 3931
Cell: +27 (0) 78-735-8809
E-mail: tgubula@parliament.gov.za
E-mail: tgubula@parliament.gov.za
