AGSA undertakes real-time audits of KZN flood relief funds

The Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) will undertake real-time audits of the flood relief funds to ensure they aid the flood-ravaged areas in KwaZulu-Natal.

This comes after society raised concerns over the fear that government will pocket relief funds meant to assist the communities where the floods wrecked homes, roads and crucial infrastructure.

What is a real-time audit?

A real-time audit is an early audit aiming to prevent, detect and report on the findings to ensure an immediate response to prevent leakage, potential fraud, and wastage.

Real-time audits equip accounting officers and accounting authorities of public institutions to act quickly on weaknesses in controls and prevent further losses.

ALSO READ: KZN relief efforts mired in protests, looting and distrust of government

What does a real-time audit do?

A real-time audit enables immediate oversight and consequence management.

A real-time audit is still reactive and, therefore, transactions must take place for the audit to provide independent assurance that the transaction was performed correctly.

It also ensure that purchased goods or services are of the right quality and they reach the intended beneficiaries.

Lastly it must also determine that the transactions that took place complied with the requisite laws and regulations.

Covid-19 real-time audits

After the outbreak of covid-19 in 2020, AGSA conducted real-time audits on the R500 billion allocated to ensure businesses had financial back up to assist them to recover from the pandemic.

AGSA issued three reports which identified key weaknesses which could have avoided the corruption that came with the high transactions and misuse of the funds.

The reports included reconciliation and tracking of transactions, weak internal preventative controls  continued deficiencies in supply chain management, technological weaknesses, poor record-keeping, poor quality of service and goods

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa to address joint sitting of Parliament on KZN floods