State officials who fail to pay suppliers and service providers within 30 days will now be guilty of misconduct. The Cabinet has approved the establishment of a special unit to tackle invoice backlogs. The unit will be located in the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, which will work with the Treasury and the Department of Public Service and Administration. Its mandate includes investigating late payment or nonpayment of invoices, identifying the causes of this, and facilitating and instituting misconduct proceedings to ensure there are consequences. It will also support or intervene where there is continuous noncompliance. Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe told Parliament on Thursday that the Cabinet had agreed "to take a harder line on departments that do not adhere to the payment of suppliers on time. We will not relent on this.... "[We have] warned officials failure to pay bills constitutes financial misconduct … we are looking at charging officials on the w...
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