It’s time for the Auditor-General to bite
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa and Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced last month that the Public Audit Amendment Act would come into operation on April 1 to little fanfare and ceremony.
But the 18 sections of the act may prove to be among the most crucial in the government’s fight against irregular, unauthorised and wasteful expenditure, which stood at R55.6billion in national and provincial departments and entities at the end of March last year.
The standalone irregular expenditure of R51bn excluded a further R28.4bn racked up by state-owned entities not audited by Auditor-General (A-G) Kimi Makwetu.
Irregular expenditure has been feeding the beast that is corruption, which has been eating away at our social fibre and stealing from the poor. The country’s 257 municipalities incurred almost R28.4bn in irregular expenditure in the 2016/17 financial year, a 75% increase from the over R16.2bn in the previous year.
Just two days before Ramaphosa signed the act into law in November, Makwetu raised alarm at the financial mismanagement of national and provincial governments, which had not been addressed for the past four years.
Now the new regulations have come into effect, giving Makwetu teeth. The days of public servants wilfully wasting taxpayers’ money and ignoring the A-G’s findings could be over.
Makwetu can now issue a certificate of debt when an accounting officer or accounting authority has failed to comply with his remedial action. This means officials will be held personally liable for irregular expenditure.
Should Makwetu find a material irregularity during an entity’s audit and its bosses ignore or fail to address it, he will have the power to refer it to another public body for investigation, taking into account whether another body is already probing the matter.
And when all else fails, Makwetu will have the power to force a public body to publish its investigation report in any manner it deems appropriate.
The A-G’s new powers have definitely ushered in a new era in public service.
We hope the recklessness with which public money was stolen will be a thing of the past. That is, if Ramaphosa and the country’s law enforcement agencies help Makwetu use his new teeth to bite.