AG flags legislature’s lack of expenditure

DURING the presentation of the legislature’s annual report, members of the legislature’s oversight committee questioned the institution’s spending after the auditor-general flagged under-expenditure of R12.7 million.

Committee chairperson Mireille Wenger also wanted to know from the institution’s director of financial management Nicole Petersen on why the amount increased during the 2019/20 financial year.

Meanwhile, committee member Reagan Allen (DA) said: “The report states there was irregular expenditure of R3,458,009. Even though it is noted that many were condoned but that three have yet to be condoned.

“What is the amount from this expenditure that was not condoned?”

Petersen said: “In terms of the irregular expenditure, yes there was an increase. Some of these were identified by ourselves and condoned during the financial year.”

“As the auditors did their audit, they queried some of our procurement even though we felt that some of it was not irregular expenditure.

“But based on their findings and their interpretation, it was then classified as irregular expenditure.

“We are taking those findings into account and updating our supply-chain system so that we don’t have repeat findings. The under-expenditure is mainly from the compensation of employees with the late filling of posts and vacancies.”

In response to a query from committee member Ricardo Mackenzie (DA) on what percentage of local businesses benefited from the legislature’s state of the province address, Petersen said: “For exact numbers we would have to do an analysis of the spend and the service providers and can file a report on that after this meeting.”

Speaker Masizole Mnqasela said one of the things he was proud of was the parental leave for parliamentarians which was adopted in December 2019.