BL Premium reports that according to newly appointed auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke, if it were not for weaknesses in the government’s systems, Covid-19 relief funds would have reached more people, although she also noted that there has been some improvement in the controls.
Maluleke released her office’s second audit report on Covid-19 relief funds on Wednesday. This was three months after the first report found incidents of fraud and double-dipping, overpayments, underpayments, and the invalid rejection of beneficiaries, especially in the Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (Ters) and in the SA Social Security Agency’s (Sassa) R350 temporary relief grant for the unemployed. “If our processes were better we could have got much more out of this major effort,” Maluleke opined. She pointed out that the information technology systems, processes and controls used in government were not agile enough to respond to the changes needed. And, the lack of validation, integration and sharing of data across government platforms still resulted in people, including government officials, receiving benefits and grants to which they were not entitled. But, Maluleke reported that there had been a good attempt to implement recommendations from her office’s first report. Maluleke’s office will release its third special Covid-19 report, which will focus on local government, in mid-2021.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Genevieve Quintal at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
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