Nearly 100 Eastern Cape government officials have been fired or suspended without pay for financial transgressions totalling R74.7m over the past five years. Forty were fired for transgressions amounting to more than R38.5m, and a further 50-plus were suspended without pay for transgressions involving R36.2m. This was revealed by premier Oscar Mabuyane in response to questions posed in the legislature by DA MPL Dr Vicky Knoetze.
In his written response, Mabuyane also revealed that an additional 51 civil servants in the province, implicated in financial transgressions totalling more than R177m, had chosen to resign before action could be taken against them. The transgressions included fraud, misuse of state assets, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, irregular expenditure, loss of state assets and financial non-disclosure. In 340 cases, involving more than R573m in total, the implicated officials escaped scot-free after the state dismissed their cases.
Warning letters were issued in 238 cases, for transgressions totalling a whopping R915m. In 124 cases, Mabuyane told the legislature, provincial civil servants were forced to repay the state more than R3.6m after being found guilty of wrongdoing. An amount of R3.2bn, involving 108 cases, had since been condoned, while R172.7m in 135 cases, was written off.
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Mabuyane said these records had been drawn from financial misconduct registers compiled by all departments. “The provincial treasury analyses these registers quarterly for the new incurrence of financial misconduct, and also looks for progress on previously reported cases,” he said. “Quarterly feedback letters to accounting officers are done, with recommendations on how the cases can be fast-tracked.”
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