'Officials wasting taxpayers' money must be held accountable'
Parliament's Standing Committee on the Auditor-General (AG) has called on political leaders to take accountability for the decline in national and provincial audits.
Auditor general Kimi Makwetu's latest annual general report revealed that irregular expenditure has increased from R45.6 billion in the 2016/2017 financial year to R51 billion.
The committee's chairperson Nthabiseng Khunou says the the Public Audit Amendment Bill will give the auditor-general more power to hold officials accountable.
"The committee believes the implementation of the Public Audit Amendment Bill will act as a deterrent against disregarding the AG's recommendations and will improve accountability.
"The office of the AG must move with speed to develop and implement regulations necessary to implement the bill."
The new bill will hand Makwetu more authority and power to act against those whose responsibility it is to oversee the finances of state departments and SOEs.
"We really need to improve the way we are doing things, we can't believe anything right now, we have laws and bills passed by parliament and all we have to do is implement and improve these laws. The laws that are their will make an enabling environment to make sure that implementation is not a problem.
"Other employees they do wrong things in one department and go to another department and do the same thing without anything being done but with the new law we will trace them, wherever they are even if they are on pension they will pay for irregular expenditure and maladministration."