Education fails to cough up millions
THE provincial department of roads and public works is struggling to pay its service providers – and the main culprit compromising its cashflow is the provincial education department’s R140-million arrears.
This is according to a letter from roads and public works MEC Thandiswa Marawu to provincial finance MEC Sakhumzi Somyo, asking for his intervention in getting the debt settled. At the time Somyo was acting as education MEC.
The money relates to payments made by Marawu’s department to service providers working on education infrastructure projects.
“These outstanding funds results in the department being at times unable to pay its own service providers due to negative cashflow,” states Marawu in her plea also sent to the provincial administration head Marion Mbina-Mthembu.
In her correspondence dated August 24, Marawu told Somyo, Mbina-Mthembu and education department’s superintendentgeneral Themba Kojana that “currently many of the service providers not paid have threatened to abandon sites if not paid soon”.
Marawu said she had signed a service delivery agreement with the education department in July 2015, an agreement which allowed roads and public works to procure and manage all service providers, consultants and contractors.
Marawu’s department will pay the service providers after they present their invoices, while in turn education was to refund them the payments on a monthly basis.
Marawu said as at July 31, her department was owed an accumulated R139.4-million by education, with R9.3-million of that run up during 2016-17.
She said Mandla Makupula’s department had last paid up on March 28, five months ago.
Marawu said the failure to pay was compromising small businesses and placing her department in a negative cashflow situation.
Many of the companies not yet paid by her department, had threatened to abandon the sites if payments were not done, she added.
Marawu’s spokesman Mphumzi Zuzile yesterday could neither deny nor confirm the existence of Marawu’s letter.
His department handled infrastructure projects for a number of provincial departments, but he could not provide details as to which department owed money.
“All I can say is that on a monthly and quarterly basis there are letters written by MEC Marawu to provincial treasury in connection with money issues,” Zuzile said.
Somyo confirmed receiving Marawu’s letter while he was acting education MEC, saying such payment failure was crippling the department as it became unable to deliver on its projects due to cash shortage.
Attempts to get comment from both Kojana and Makupula yesterday proved fruitless.