Road Agency Limpopo: R5.3 billion irregular expenditure incurred

A road agency operating under the Limpopo department of public works has caused an uproar after it incurred R5.3 billion of irregular expenditure.

This has led to the Democratic Alliance (DA) to call on premier Stan Mathabatha and the department’s MEC, Nkakareng Rakgoale, to deal with the situation.

The party said Road Agency Limpopo (RAL) has been characterised by its failure to meet its mandate, gross mismanagement and poor financial controls.

Despite these glaring failures, the party said the agency’s average annual salary for an employee was R900 000. “RAL’s personnel expenditure is R74.897 million for 83 employees.

These employee costs are expected to increase by 30% in the 2022-23 financial year due to filling of vacancies and salary increases,” said DA spokesperson Risham Maharaj.

“Limpopo has 31% paved roads. Districts like Capricorn and Waterberg have 73% and 79% gravel roads respectively,” said Maharaj.

He said the DA was concerned RAL had received unqualified audits, with findings, for the past five years and that the same entity continued to fail to achieve a clean audit.

This, he said, was largely due to noncompliance with legislation and failure to prevent fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

“The entity incurred irregular expenditure of R5.3 billion, including previous years’ expenditures, which the provincial Treasury had refused to condone,” he said.

But yesterday, the department slammed the DA, saying its call for the dissolution of the entity was baseless. “We are satisfied with RAL functions.

We are moving with speed to ensure we complete over 100 projects to rehabilitate and upgrade roads through RAL,” said Limpopo public works spokesperson Witness Tiva.

Tiva said the agency was annually audited by the auditor-general and has been receiving unqualified audit opinions for the last five years.

“So, it is misleading for the DA to suggest that there are no financial controls in place,” he said. Tiva said the salary bill of RAL staff is 6.8% of its total budget.

“The agency is the lowest in the province in terms of its compensation of employees,” he said. “The department can reveal that there are 130 000km of unpaved road networks in Limpopo.

We are currently unable to upgrade all these kilometres from gravel to tar, given the financial constraints.”

He said the tarring of roads in Limpopo was influenced by tourism, mining and agriculture, including access to schools, medical facilities, traffic volumes and population.

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