EDITORIAL: The auditor-general needs greater powers
Government departments and state entities are not obeying the rules about how they account for their spending of public money
The increase in irregular expenditure was a staggering 80% between 2014-15 and 2015-16. While irregular expenditure is not necessarily money that has been lost or stolen, large parts of this amount could indeed have fallen down the black hole that is corruption in the public service. What it does indicate, however, is that government departments and state entities are not obeying the rules about how they account for their spending of public money. Makwetu found that most of this irregular expenditure was due to officials not following the correct procedures when procuring goods and services and that is a cause for considerable concern. This is surely not rocket science. If you have a budget, then receipts and authorisations should be reconciled in such a way as to show that the projects were duly authorised and correctly paid for. If the officials are properly qualified, how hard can that be?One of the biggest problems is that a clean audit report is increasingly being seen as somet...
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