Mostly warnings for welfare staff who stole/squandered R70 million

Abstract

Most of 116 social service staffers involved in a variety of scams and irregular tenders that cost R70 million and caused suffering for thousands of intended beneficiaries were ‘reprimanded and served letters of warning’ before controls were tightened. Revealing this last month, Social Development Minister Edna Molewa admitted that irregular expenditure and fraud by staff saw the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) notch up losses of more than R70 million during the 2008/09 financial year. Two officials were dismissed, two resigned (leading to criminal charges being withdrawn), one was suspended for three months without pay and two were facing trial. On the advice of SASSA’s financial misconduct board, the remainder were reprimanded and served with letters of warning. The bulk of the loss was due to irregular expenditure of more than R69m, incurred by officials failing to follow proper tendering procedures. This was discovered and probed during the previous financial year, but reported during 2008/09. Molewa said internal controls had been strengthened to prevent future incidents, and as a result irregular expenditure for the 2009/10 financial year was cut down to R2.5m. Fraud at SASSA’s regional offices and one case at its headquarters involved an amount of R1.08m, with 15 officials from head office and the Western, Northern and Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga and Limpopo implicated in a variety of swindles.