Education Department on verge of black hole

No matter large scale intervention in its affairs, the Education Department seemingly remains on the verge of a black hole threatening to devour it. Of all government institutions seemingly accumulating rates bills totalling a near R500 million by last month, the Department of Education is reportedly the biggest culprit with a whopping R185 million in arrears. Bad debt is not the worst of departmental sins though, as factors like payments to a ghost employees’ component, record keeping, asset management and fruitless or wasteful expenditure apparently totalling billions seemingly keep haunting them.
In applying his mind to a report on the continued support intervention by Provincial Treasury in the Department of Education in terms of a section of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), Democratic Alliance (DA) Provincial Leader Jacques Smalle attributed the mess troubling the department mainly to lack of leadership, poor financial management, over-commitment on projects and outstanding debts to suppliers. With reference to a report made available to Smalle by Provincial Treasury, he claimed that the document contained no specifics on an estimated astronomical R1,2 billion in fruitless and wasteful expenditure accumulated during the 2014/15 financial year and that there was no mention of an alleged ghost employees’ bill of R100 million impacting on departmental finances, in the documentation. According to Smalle the documentation indeed confirmed adverse problems within the Department of Education, but didn’t comprehensively detail those challenges, identify responsible parties, steps to be taken against them or which tender processes had been flouted.
The hard-hitting documentation sheds light on a host of worrisome factors and contains references to operational challenges triggering the intervention last August. It included perpetual disclaimers, escalating unauthorised expenditure, general poor cash management, poor human resource and records management, asset management described as having been in a state of shambles, poor internal control in supply chain management, governance failures, under-spending of conditional grants and failure to settle all contractual obligations and pay monies owed within the prescribed 30 days.
In the same vein Smalle referred to the DA in Limpopo intending to drag the Department of Education to court within the next week over failure to provide them with financial information for oversight purposes. He said numerous attempts – including two applications in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) and a request to Legislature Speaker Polly Boshielo – have been made to obtain the 2014/15 Auditor-General’s (AG) management report reflecting on departmental matters. He said despite MEC Ishmael Kgetjepe giving the go-ahead for the collection of the particular documentation, Smalle was repeatedly refused the document by the accounting officer. The DA intended filing the court application against the department to keep them accountable for financial discipline seeing that the provincial government failed to do so, he stressed.
He expressed the view that there has been little change since the issuing of the 2013/14 AG management report pertaining to the affairs of the department and that the documentation on the support intervention did not reveal much.
In conclusion Smalle raised the opinion that a more dynamic person was required in the position of departmental figurehead. He predicted that if the department was not going to effect changes to its organogram and skills base by bringing in a strong core group of competent and knowledgeable officials to turn matters around, the department was destined for doom. In the meantime news broke of Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga reportedly taking control of three provincial education departments, including Limpopo.

Story: YOLANDE NEL
>>observer.yolande@gmail.com