Mail & Guardian reports that Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi has told MPs his department needs to “talk less” and do more to combat the years of irregular expenditure and mismanagement that have plagued the Compensation Fund (CF).

“[T]here must be less talk now. And there must be, actually, acting involved,” he indicated on Tuesday to the portfolio committee on employment and labour, which had called the managers and heads of department of the CF and the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to account before it after a damning presentation in May by the Auditor General (AG). The CF has received disclaimers from the AG for several years because of insufficient information being provided on its financial statements. The AG reported that internal controls at the UIF and Compensation Fund were “weak” and “concerning” and had “resulted in a prolonged situation of unauditable information for a period of 10 years, especially from the CF”. Nxesi told the committee that his department was finalising its latest plans for submission to the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa). On 19 May, Scopa ordered the department to facilitate a forensic investigation into the affairs of the CF. “We are hard at work coming up with the action plans which have to be submitted. We were given 21 days from the day we appeared [before Scopa]. And even those action plans as we finalise them we have to also show the AG [auditor general that the plans] are addressing what is supposed to be addressed,” said Nxesi. The portfolio committee said the department must provide information on its plans to parliament by the end of July, before it met again in August.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Eunice Stoltz at Mail & Guardian

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