Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu has warned that the financial health of the provincial departments of Health, Education and Public Works are in a bad state and require urgent intervention.

“Urgent intervention is needed to prevent the collapse of these key service delivery departments,” said Makwetu in his presentation of the 2017/18 annual audit report.

Compared with other departments, these sectors were “in a bad state”, he said.

The departments of Education, Health and Public Works continued to have the poorest audit results of all departments, with only two of the departments in these sectors receiving clean audit opinions.

The office of the auditor-general pointed out that this cluster of departments was responsible for just over half of the departmental budgets and for implementing key programmes to improve the health and welfare of citizens.

The departments had racked up deficits and a string of unauthorised expenditure. The total deficit of the Health departments was R8.4-billion.

“All the Health departments, except [those of] the Western Cape and the Free State, had claims against them that were more than their 2018/19 operational budget. The claims of the Eastern Cape Health Department were over three times more than its operational budget,” the report said.

In the education sphere, the deficit incurred by the Eastern Cape Education Department alone was R1.7-billion.

Makwetu’s report indicated that technical and vocational educational and training colleges continued to struggle to account for their finances. Only three of the 48 colleges audited by the auditor-general’s office received clean audits, compared with nine in the previous year.

“These colleges cannot accurately account for the money they receive or for what is owed to them [or] for their assets. Questions should be asked about the potential loss of money through the poor management of assets, revenue and debtors at these colleges, at a time when funding is desperately needed for tertiary education.”

The auditor-general’s report also included findings on water infrastructure development and housing development finance. It said it had found recurring irregularities in procurement processes and inadequate contract management on water and housing projects.

“Some of the projects displayed serious weaknesses in terms of delayed delivery, poor-quality work, waste and mismanagement.”