R900m lost through extra leave

BHISHO has lost close to R900million in the past financial year by allowing education staff more leave than what was due to them.

The provincial education department estimated that it would take a “minimum of three years” to correct its leave capturing system.

This comes after the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) found that the department did not have adequate systems in place to record leave.

Scopa members at the Bhisho Legislature on Tuesday said there had not been improvements in the department and officials provided the same excuses yearly.

Scopa member Mxolisi Dimaza said the department still battled with

Scopa member Sicelo Gqobana said instead of improving the department was regressing while Michael Peter said when it came to the department everything was “in the pipeline”.

Scopa chairman Max Mhlati said he was not satisfied with the responses.

It was recommended that accounting officer Sizakele Netshilaphala, who has been seconded from Treasury to education as part of the provincial government’s initiative to help the ailing department overcome its financial woes, set up a system to record leave days and monitor it.

Netshilaphala said the department was undertaking a process to

accurate

data

despite

support. analyse all personnel systems to check weaknesses.

She said the assessment of systems was also being undertaken in 23 education districts in the provinces.

Other progress made so far was that the department had centralised leave gratuity payments in order to avoid overpayments.

A process of cleaning Persal, government’s employee registration system, has been completed.

Netshilaphala said the department has identified the South African School Administration and Management System (Sasams), which all schools use to report monthly, as a back-up system that it can use to check accuracy and completeness of leave on Persal.

Employee files have been cen- tralised and a business plan on the human resource capacitation programme including file reconstruction and Persal clean-up has been developed.

She said there were signs of improvement. However, these would only be sustainable when a new service delivery model and organisational structure had been established.

The new model will reduce the number of district offices from 23 to less than 14.

About 13 top education managers were nearly chased out of Tuesday’s meeting when their presence was questioned by Scopa members who said they were supposed to be at work.

Scopa members said only education MEC Mandla Makupula, acting head of department Ray Tywakadi and Netshilaphala were supposed to be there.

This was after Netshilaphala had asked if some of the managers could respond to Scopa questions.

Scopa members said the meeting was not a portfolio committee on education sitting and not every top manager was required to be present, but they allowed them to stay. —