PRASA AND A-G LOCK HORNS

Negative audit finding a bone of contention for rail utility company

STATE-owned rail transport utility Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) and the office of auditor-general Terence Nombembe are at loggerheads over one of his negative audit findings against the public company.

And now Parliament’s finance watchdog, the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), has instructed the two to speedily resolve their differences and report back to the national legislature.

At the centre of the battle is the A-G’s audit finding that several senior managers had extended six contracts worth more than R40million with approval from their superiors, which was in violation of relevant supply chain management laws.

Prasa chief executive Lucky Montana has disputed the finding, saying the A-G was being “unfair ”.

“We are not trying to interfere, we respect the important work of the A-G. But we are being dealt with unfairly chair and that’s the point I want to make.”

Montana, and his chief financial officer Fenton Gastin, argued that the officials implicated had separate mandates to extend the individual six contracts, but the A-G had decided to aggregate the amount of money involved, which led to the six contracts appearing irregular.

But Lindani Mukhudwani, a senior manager from the office of the A-G, stuck to her guns, telling MPs that Prasa had failed to submit any evidence to prove its assertions during the audit period.

“We had an engagement after the audit process. Our point of view still stands that during the audit process [on] the evidence that we received, that we reviewed, we came to a con- clusion that the delegated levels that signed this did not have the authority [to do so],” she said.

Scopa chairman Themba Godi was also not impressed when Montana again questioned the office of the A-G, this time disputing the audit finding that Prasa had set itself 56 performance targets, of which 29 had not been met.

Montana insisted that Prasa had only 35 performance targets.

“We might be quibbling over very little things and you are the first entity to say the auditorgeneral has counted wrong. That is what is making our horns to stand,” Godi said.

Montana said the issue was important to him because the targets were linked to a performance agreement Prasa had signed with Transport Minister Dipuo Peters.

“The point I am making is that we have raised the issue, we think that it should have been taken seriously,” he said.