Plug wasteful expenditure

THE years under former president Jacob Zuma were characterised by massive government corruption and waste.

Both affect how much is available to do what needs to be done in critical areas, particularly infrastructure, education, health, and social development.

Last year, the economic development department revealed that corruption had cost the SA gross domestic product (GDP) some R27-billion annually as well as the loss of 76 000 jobs that would otherwise have been created.

The cost of wasteful and irregular expenditure is even higher.

This haemorrhaging of money has to stop. Billions of rands annually leak out of the fiscus due to uncaring and careless politicians and government officials who choose not to follow the law in terms of supply chain management.

In the past week alone, it has come to light that taxpayers have had to fork out R200-million due to negligent Defence Department officials who accepted, in writing, a 2011 tender for a five-year lease of two aircraft at a cost of R827-million for the president and his deputy. After accepting the terms of the contract, the officials decided to go shopping elsewhere. The department has now been ordered by a court of law to fork out over R200-million in damages to the successful contractor which incurred these costs to source the necessary aircraft to fulfil a contract which the department reneged on. That is R200-million for which South Africa received zero services, infrastructure or any other advantage. It is R200-million which might have built some 2 200 RDP houses (at an average cost of some R90 000 per house) or 200 brick and mortar classrooms (at R1-million per classroom) or paid the R1 600-a-month oldage grants for 10 416 people for one year.

Instead, our government must now pay out that money in the form of damages and we will get nothing in return.

Then, there is the R632-million this newspaper reported on this week which was paid out – without any tendering process – to fix roads which were, at best, so shoddily repaired they almost immediately returned to their formerly dilapidated state. That could have built over 6 000 RDP houses, 600 classrooms or paid the old-age grants of over 31 000 people for a year.

The Eastern Cape is reportedly one of the worst offenders in the country’s massive annual irregular expenditure. Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu recently warned that the country’s irregular expenditure in 20162017 was over R45-billion. This represented a 55% increase from the previous year. That R45-billion could build around some 500 0000 RDP houses which would go a long way towards addressing South Africa’s 2.1 million housing backlog.

It may seem simplistic to translate these amounts into houses, classrooms or grants, but it does go some way towards illustrating the good that these massive amounts could have been used for.

In a country where over 30 million people live below the poverty line, it is simply unacceptable that we waste the scarce resources that are available to us. It has to stop.