A costly lesson for Education Department

THE Western Cape Education Department has in the 2016/17 financial year written off a staggering R7.9 million that relates to overpaid salaries to staff.

This was revealed at a meeting of the Western Cape standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) yesterday where Education MEC Debbie Schäfer and senior officials briefed the committee in the legislature.

According to a presentation by Leon Ely, deputy director for corporate services, the overpayments include an amount paid in respect of the Policy on Incapacity Leave and Ill-health Retirement (PILIR), but the amounts cannot be determined.

“The department has, however, implemented stricter rules regarding the management of the recovery debt… (It) is managing the PILIR by ensuring that only those who are entitled to temporary incapacity leave with pay are granted this, and that there is no unnecessary delay in assessing their eligibility or overpayments for those not entitled to such leave,” Ely said.

He also said their intervention on the take-on of new debt cases in the reporting year was less than the previous years.

“Staff debt (in-service and employees) has reduced by nearly 13 million in 2017/18 compared with 2016/17,” he said. Ely added that an amount of R5.5m was debt written off as irrecoverable in the 2016/17 financial year, mainly due to prescription.

“It is not possible to indicate what amount of this relates to PILIR as the debt system does not distinguish to that level,” he said.

Schäfer said: “We are looking at ways of improving this and putting measures in place that will address this.”

Ely also briefed the committee on the irregular expenditure amounting to just more than R10m.

He said 88% of cases that were under investigation as per the 2016/17 annual financial statements had been finalised during the 2017/18 financial year.

“It should be noted that the vast majority (91%) of 2016/17 cases reported as under investigation were in fact found not to be irregular expenditure. Only 9% were confirmed to be irregular expenditure,” he said.

Ely said the main reason for the high amount of invalid cases reported was because the department followed a two-phased quality assurance approach.

“The directorate for internal control performed a first observation only without any thorough investigation. This followed by a detailed investigation performed by the directorate for financial accounting. There has been a backlog of investigations relating to cases dated as far back as 2010. This backlog has been cleared during the 2017/18 financial year,” he said.

Fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the 2016/17 year amounts to just more than R2m, but only 27% of cases under investigation were found to be actual fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

Teacher absenteeism was also discussed as Schäfer described it as a massive problem.

The department included 15 recommendations, all which have been implemented, for it to deal with the risk more effectively.