Millions of Pula slip through gov't fingers
Mbongeni Mguni | Monday January 30, 2023 06:00
Figures from the Accountant General’s office indicate that the trend of millions of Pula being lost in the public coffers through arrears, unreconciled imprests, financial and property losses as well as widespread weaknesses in recovery continue to date.
The arrears and losses per ministry appear minor when stacked up against the tens of billions government commits in budget expenditure each year, but when put together and because many of these amounts have been running unresolved for years, the issue is a headache for the Accountant General.
The trend is particularly worrisome as it flies against government’s pledge in recent years to tighten its revenue collection and public finance management, as COVID-19 and a slowdown in mineral revenues have eroded the national coffers and forced Batswana into a new normal where each Thebe from the budget is required to do more across the counter.
And yet while outside the civil service, Batswana have been forced to adjust to increases in various taxes and levies, deferral of projects and the threat of cutbacks in subsidies within as the public service the latest Accountant General’s report points to wanton system abuse, lax controls and reluctant recoveries.
One example is the policeman who stole P88,600 from the public purse in 2013. Recoveries of the stolen amount only began two years later and were set at the rate of P877 per month meaning that by the end of the 2020-21 financial year, the policeman was still paying back the loan and had about P31,500 left to return.
The case is typical of the process of arrears and losses in the public finance system where civil servants are involved. When read together, reports by the Auditor General and the Accountant General indicate that theft and property losses in the system are picked up and investigated slowly and when discovered, the process of recovering the funds owed ultimately to taxpayers, is even slower.
The Accountant General’s report shows that many of the cases of loss of public funds at the hands of civil servants involve “systemic fraud” indicating organised, premeditated criminal activity spread over a period of time.
Typically, the public finance system attempts to recover the losses through garnishing the officer’s salary, his/her terminal benefits or in the worst case scenario, prosecution and the deputy sheriff’s route. In many cases, however, the amounts officers repay are set at bare minimums or the losses are greater than can be recovered from terminal benefits or the deputy sheriff route.
Take the case of a Department of Veterinary Services employee who embezzled P260,000 between 2010 and 2014. Just P31,000 was recovered from the employee and after the Tsabong Magistrates Court intervened to order the return of the funds, the employee paid just a paltry P200 in November 2020.
As at March 31, 2021 financial losses arising from theft and similar behaviour in the civil service were estimated at P15.7 million, with recoveries of just P1.1 million over the years. The situation is worse when the losses of non-vehicle stores such as laptops, tents and others government assets are tabulated. As at March 31, 2021 P1.3 million in stores had vanished in the public finance system, with recoveries of under P31,000.
However, it is in the area of arrears, or amounts owed by civil servants and other external parties to government, that the tardy recoveries grow into a significant issue for the public finance system. As at March 2021, according to the Accountant General, P140.2 million was listed as arrears or amounts owed to government, with 99 percent of these being amounts that can be tracked far down memory lane.
One of the largest of these amounts is a static amount of P91 million owed by parents for school fees at public education facilities. Recoveries of this amount have not moved through the years indicating the difficulties of getting the lost revenues back to government.
Another slow-moving arrear balance has been the P2.4 million in mineral royalties government owed dating back several years. As the result of commercial operations, unlike the school fees, it is likely that slow recovery of these arrears is due to sluggish liquidation processes or difficulties in contacting the owners of mines responsible for the royalties.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which annually takes ministries to task on their management of public funds, has regularly expressed its exasperation with the leakages in public finance management.
“There is a serious problem of capacity and will to collect government revenue including lots of money owed to government,” the committee’s current chair, Dithapelo Keorapetse said in a commentary previously published by Mmegi.
Nehemiah Modubule, the PAC chair between 2012 and 2015, recalls that the committee at one point suggested that punitive measures be taken against accounting officers for the leakages in public revenues.
“These are government monies and developments are not taking place, while these monies are lying elsewhere,” he told Mmegi previously.
“People are not being penalised, but if they were and made to account for those lapses, you would see effective management.
“The most severe punishment at the moment is that someone resigns. They lose their job, but we have lost our money.
“Without punishment, a culture develops and it becomes entrenched, making it difficult to get rid of.”
Finance Minister, Peggy Serame, meanwhile, has previously told Mmegi that the Public Finance Management Act provides for the surcharge of public officers who cause or permit misuse or loss of public funds.
“It is a question of enforcing the law,” Serame said.
“The challenge is usually establishing evidence against individual officers to be surcharged, given the nature of the public service.”