The Auditor-General (AG) has just expressed an audit opinion and issued a damning report that indicates serious irregularities with the community work programme (CWP) of the Department of Cooperative Governance and the FF Plus will request The Hawks to launch an investigation.
It is unacceptable that billions of rand of tax money are disappearing in extremely suspect circumstances and that no one is held accountable for it. According to the report, the amount is a staggering R2,8 billion.
Billions of rand are allocated to this programme to help the poorest in the community, but the AG's report serves as proof that the money is actually being looted. The officials who are involved in this are literally taking the food out of the mouths of the poorest of the poor, the very people that they are supposed to uplift.
What is even more worrying is that the Department that is tasked with ensuring that municipalities function properly is itself utterly dysfunctional.
The AG's report indicated various irregularities. Financial statements were not submitted on time and were riddled with 'basic errors' even after the AG had already pointed out some of the mistakes previously.
Some specific things that the AG pointed out and that the FF Plus considers irregularities include that in many cases, the beneficiaries of payments that were made could not be found, no disciplinary steps were taken against officials who acted unlawfully and errors that are indicative of incompetence, a lack of oversight and accountability.
It is clear that the greatest irregularities relate to the expenses of community service projects. Over the last financial year, all the irregular expenditure was due to non-compliance with procurement legislation.
Of the R2,8 billion that could not be accounted for, R2,2 billion was paid to service providers while no goods nor services were rendered.
In one case, an amount of R1,8 billion was mistakenly paid to a supplier for municipal infrastructure and it could result in a material loss of R1,04 billion.
With the community service projects, money was paid to people who had already passed away and to civil servants, which means that they apparently received double their salary.
It is incomprehensible that a minister, in this case Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, remains in her position despite the fact that the entire Department is in utter chaos.
She must be replaced by a competent individual immediately seeing as the collapse of local government in South Africa is one of the greatest obstacles to the country's economic survival.
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