BusinessLive reports that Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane has admitted that her department paid out R30m worth of bonuses to its employees, despite the department having been found wanting in the management of its financial books.  

This emerged in a written reply by the minister to MPs’ questions released on Monday morning.  She said 1,959 officials between salary levels 1 and 12 got the bulk of the R30m in performance bonuses.  Two officials in salary levels 13 and 14 got a bonus of R58,092.82 and R69,069.60 respectively.  In his 2015-16 audit report, Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu noted that the department incurred fruitless and wasteful expenditure to the value of R87.2m and irregular expenditure amounting to R2.5bn.  But, the minister blamed circumstances beyond her control for the state of her department’s finances, claiming that projects were well executed by departments but poorly maintained by municipalities.  The department had also been dealing with the suspension since July of its director-general, Dan Mashitisho.

• Read this report by Khulekani Magubane in full at BusinessLive

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