Old soldiers are not on the same level as other recipients of government welfare assistance was the inference made to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) following an Auditor-General (AG) report.
Acting Department of Military Veterans (DMV) Director-General Nontobeko Mafu told Songezo Zibi’s committee, among others, the DMV is using a 2010 “interim structure” and its database management system is a manual one as are other “paper-based work processes”. Staff have limited office space and work in “a toxic organizational culture which impedes proper consequence management”.
Mafu’s February presentation also revealed that there are 39 vacant posts out of 169 funded ones. Additionally, four senior managers were pre-cautionary suspended for close to two years from the middle of the 2021/22 financial year.
Due to suspensions, the Director Internal Audit was made to perform the duties of the Chief Financial Officer, and audit work was neglected. Furthermore, certain contracts or procurements in 2021/22 were concluded without due processes being observed including the acquisition of 90 Roller Drum Machines (Pothole Machines), now being raised as a Material Irregularity by the AGSA; and 10 000 tablets, now being raised as Material Irregularity by AGSA.
The internal audit unit at the DMV was “ineffective and inadequately capacitated” SCOPA heard. The DMV received qualified audit findings in 2022/23 and 2023/24.
On the all-important military veterans’ database, without which veterans cannot access benefits including pensions and healthcare, Mafu has it the military veterans’ beneficiary database (MVBD) presently in use “does not integrate with anything”. This means access to benefits is manual and paper-based creating limitations in exercising controls and providing and monitoring acceptable levels of service delivery.
A further negative is that DMV cannot provide “timely responses” to veterans’ queries. “All of the above continuously leads to exposure on financial and data integrity risks.”
The DMV attempted to develop a database management system through the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) but “SITA has for numerous years failed to deliver on the project. Consideration for an alternative source outside SITA was considered with no success as SITA must approve an alternative source, as per the SITA Act. This means that the department cannot succeed with automation until SITA delivers.”
With regard to the inefficient use of resources and movable tangible capital assets that could not be located, Mafu said the department has not been timely verifying, reconciling and disposing of redundant and damaged assets timely. This has led to a qualified audit opinion based on unverifiable assets in the 2023/24 financial year.
In the short term an appointed service provider will undertake an assets verification project with full reconciliation. This, according to the presentation, will ensure the DMV asset register “is cleansed and assets disclosed on the annual financial statement are complete and exist”.
A long term solution is for the department to have its own assets management and disposal unit, together with the relevant committees such as disposal committee and loss control committee.
