Fresh audit exposes COVID spending chaos
Mbongeni Mguni | Wednesday April 29, 2026 12:45
The Auditor General’s latest report, tabled in Parliament a week and a half ago, paints a disturbing picture of misspending of the COVID-19 Fund, the central wallet into which government, the private sector, donors and well-wishers poured funds during the pandemic.
The Auditor General’s previous report on pandemic-era spending was limited to the first eight months of COVID-19 being declared a public health emergency, but it did show shambolic preparations and inflated tenders.
The latest report, which covers the year to March 2023, provides a few more details on irregular spending in some ministries during the pandemic.
According to the Auditor General, at the then Ministry of Presidential Affairs, authorities awarded a P14.3 million tender for electronic movement tracking devices to a local supplier on August 18, 2020. The authorities then cancelled the tender, and the company subsequently sued and won millions without delivering anything.
“The contract was prematurely terminated by the ministry on the grounds that there were no funds for the purchase, as it had not been budgeted for. “The contractor subsequently sued, and the ministry agreed to a settlement in the amount of P8 million, which was paid from the COVID-19 Account,” the Auditor General noted.
The Auditor General, Keneilwe Senyarelo, took issue with several aspects of the transaction.
“The circumstances of this payment are unsatisfactory for the following reasons. “The ministry should not have entered into a contract for which they knew there were no budgeted funds. “This has resulted in nugatory expenditure of a substantial amount of P8,000,000. “The payment was incorrectly charged to COVID-19 funds, which were specifically allocated for the pandemic containment,” the report reads.
Senyarelo recommended that the issue be investigated through the submission of a loss report by the ministry.
The P8 million is part of a much larger figure of non-COVID-related spending from the COVID-19 Fund. The Auditor General found that P416.3 million was spent on activities not related to COVID-19, “contrary to the COVID-19 Pandemic Relief Fund Order, 2020”.
The Auditor General said such expenditure represents non-compliance with the governing legal framework and points to weaknesses in expenditure oversight and adherence to approved fund management controls.
One example of non-COVID-related expenditure revolves around an amount of P25.1 million used for “psychosocial support activities for employees,” against the authorised amount of P14.95 million.
Some of the funds went towards a Ministry of Health Christmas party, payments to Wild View Resort for recreational activities at Kasane and other monies paid to Key Intelligent Holdings Solution for accommodation, boat cruise and game drive for 55 officers as part of a “stress management workshop at Kasane”.
“Whilst psychosocial support is recognised as an important component of pandemic response, this expenditure did not align with the fund’s mandate, which explicitly directed that such support should be directed towards the establishment and operation of public counselling centres and facilities accessible to the general public,” the Auditor General noted.
Senyarelo also picked other possible mispendings of COVID funds, which she could not confirm due to a lack of submissions. For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture disbursed P196.7 million to the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board (BAMB) in October 2020 to buy produce from farmers and replenish the Strategic Grain Reserve.
The Memorandum of Agreement required BAMB to maintain a separate account for these funds and to prepare a separate expenditure report.
“However, no expenditure report was available at the time of audit in October 2023,” the Auditor General noted. “The absence of financial records impedes transparency and prevents confirmation that the funds were used for the intended COVID-19 intervention.”
The latest audit report adds onto the previous probe into COVID-19 spending, which showed routine, but repeated financial abuses costing millions.
For instance, in the earlier report, auditors found that two companies, Mileage Group and Pula Rich Investments, were paid a total of P80 million via direct procurement for testing kits and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), but failed to deliver the full supply. The audit could not find evidence for approval of this particular direct procurement.
“Procurement of PPEs and medical commodities was not done at market rates and not in compliance with emergency procurement processes,” auditors noted in the October 2021 report.
The government drew down P12.6 billion from the country’s reserves in 2020 to support the budget and COVID-19 spending.