The office of the Auditor General has commended the Department of Communications, the Government Communication and Information System and Brand South Africa (Brand SA) for obtaining clean audits for the financial year that ended in March 2016.
Briefing the Portfolio Committee on Communications on the DoC’s annual report on Tuesday, Promise Buthelezi, a senior manager at the Office of the Auditor General, said the outcomes were commendable, given the fact that the department itself was new and that its entities were making an effort to maintain clean audits.
If you do a three-year comparison, you will notice that in 2013/14 and 2014/15, the issues or outcomes were more or less similar.
However, if you look at 2015/16, there are two things I would like to highlight. [I would like] to commend and congratulate Government Communication and Information System [for maintaining] their clean audit.
The newly established Department of Communications also obtained a clean audit, which is very good, he said.
Buthelezi said Brand SA, which previously had one compliance issue on its supply chain management, showed a lot of improvement.
One major improvement in the current 2015/16 financial year is Brand SA They made sure that they eliminate the material non-compliance, so they also received a clean audit opinion, Buthelezi said.
Departments or entities are regarded to have obtained a clean audit opinion based on the reliability of their financial statements, the reliability of their information regarding their pre-determined objectives and compliance with key legislation in accordance with the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).
Buthelezi said three entities � the Independent Communications Authority of South Arica (ICASA), Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) and the Film and Publication Board (FBP) received financially unqualified audits with findings, while the SABC received a qualified audit opinion with findings.
Buthelezi said, however, that one concern amongst the three entities that received unqualified audit opinions is the issue on the prevention of the irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
He also said there was a similar concern with the public broadcaster, which could not prevent irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
While this was a common reason that led to the SABC receiving a qualified audit opinion, he said the public broadcaster also came short when they presented statements with overstated amounts in some instances, and understated ones in other instances.
Buthelezi said the SABC could also not provide supporting evidence on the expenditure incurred.
He said a three-year comparison into the SABC’s performance, however, shows that there has been a reduction in the number of qualifications.
In 2013/14, the SABC sat with seven issues that led to it being given a qualified audit � irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure; TV licence and related incentives; taxation; property, plant and equipment and mobile income, among others.
Those were reduced to three in the 2014/15 financial year, with findings on irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, TV licence and taxation issues remaining unresolved.
However, in the current year under review, the SABC is only left with one qualification � which is irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
I think one major issue we have in the reduction of the qualifications is through the use of consultants. The problem is that it might be very hard to try to sustain the reduction of qualifications mainly because we have not obtained sufficient evidence to confirm that the internal control status is improving, Buthelezi said. �
Source: South African Government News Agency