An empty classroom with books on each table. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education’s finances has been called into question by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. File Picture: African News Agency (ANA) Archives.
Durban - Some KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education staff members who have resigned, retired or been dismissed continue drawing salaries long after leaving the department without being detected by the system.
The system failures have seen the staff-debt budget item rising to R400 million in the department's 2022/23 budget.
Staff debt, along with irregular and wasteful expenditure, took centre stage when the department appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) in the KZN legislature yesterday.
Yesterday’s appearance by the department for the 2022/23 financial year once again exposed the inefficiencies when it comes to financial management, with the Auditor-General’s (AG’s) office noting that the department’s audit outcomes remained stagnant due to a lack of adequate oversight over performance reporting and monitoring of compliance with key legislation.
“The department faces financial sustainability challenges, owing to its inability to recover staff debts. The department relies on a bank overdraft to fund expenditure and sustain its cash flows,” said the AG’s report.
The AG’s office warned that the department was likely to continue being haunted by problems of a financial nature, unless its funding model was re-looked at with possible amendments, combined with improved financial discipline from staff.
Lack of financial discipline was reflected by, among other issues:
According to the department, the main reason for the rise in staff debts was that while there were staff members leaving, the termination of their contracts took too long, which resulted in salaries being drawn by those no longer in the department’s employ.
Head of Department Nkosinathi Ngcobo said while there were efforts to collect the money owed to them by staff, they could not collect as they wished to because legislation made provision for only a certain amount of money to be taken from workers.
In addition to this, he said that while they were trying to deal with many of the challenges, the lack of funds meant that some functions were either not performed adequately, or were not performed at all.
“Part of the problem is that we have not filled certain posts. There is only one person who deals with investigations on irregular expenditure and the individual is overworked,” the HoD said.
Ngcobo told Scopa that the huge number of workers meant that only 10% of the budget went to goods and services as the rest went to the compensation of employees.
Education MEC Mbali Frazer gave an assurance that the matters that had been highlighted in previous years were being attended to, stating that this was done with limited resources.
“I want to assure this committee that the department is implementing consequence management and efforts are made to stop leakages,” she told committee members. She lamented the inadequate budget allocation, but said the department remained committed to getting improved matric results and to the overall improved performance of all schools in the province.
The department’s chief financial officer (CFO), Lalisingh Rambaran, cited funding shortages for the lack of capacity in key units in the department, which he said made it difficult to enforce consequence management.
“This department does not have a fully fledged internal control unit or an internal audit,” said the CFO.
Some members, including Zinhle Cele, Themba Mtshali and chairperson Maggie Govender, who are from the ANC, expressed reservations on how department officials were responding to questions, and instructed them to come back another day with better answers.
Govender expressed concern that some of the problems raised with the department had been cited the previous year and early this year, with little sign of progress.
According to Cele, while other officials had demonstrated respect towards the committee, the CFO’s responses were patronising. “We cannot be addressed like this, we are not children,” said Cele.
The IFP’s Lourens de Klerk insisted that the department’s continued financial woes reflected on poor management and how officials were not held accountable.
The DA’s Francois Rodgers said it was disheartening to see the situation worsening when it came to expenditure management and consequence management, adding that this warranted action.
“We cannot go on like this, the department is crucial for this province,” he said.
The DA KZN leader insisted that while some members may not be happy with the CFO’s response, they should not lose sight of the fact that he had highlighted that the department did not have a fully fledged internal audit and internal controls units.
The department will be allocated another meeting next week.
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