Judges pocketed close to P1m
Oarabile Mosikare | Friday September 18, 2015 15:35
The report, titled: ‘Interim Internal Audit Report – Honourable Judges’ Housing Allowance’, was prepared by the Senior Internal Auditor, Maria Mokgwathi, and was reviewed by acting deputy director, (Internal Audit), Chazha Matsheka. The report is dated September 1, 2015.
The audit covered the records for the financial years 2007/08 to 2015/16. The audit report is an annexure forming part of the Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo’s answering affidavit filed in court.
“Accordingly, payment of housing allowance was supposed to have been terminated when the Honourable Judges were allocated institutional houses but it is apparent that no action was taken to effect that change,” reads one of the findings.
The auditors said failure by Administration of Justice (AoJ) to terminate housing allowance was attributed to non-reconciliation of payroll, in contravention of Financial Procedure 1115, requiring monthly reconciliation of salaries to detect any discrepancies in salary and allowances payments. This state of affairs, the auditors reported, has exposed government funds to possibility of irrecoverable loss, considering the amount of overpayment already incurred.
“It is the opinion of the auditors that judges as beneficiaries of erroneous payments, had a duty to inform the employer of the overpayment, especially that it occurred over a considerable period of time.
They should not have allowed accumulation of overpayments to the extent it is to-date.” The audit exercise is still ongoing to establish the extent of possible overpayments to the rest of the judges.
The report shows that each of the four suspended judges received P13,500 housing allowance for the month of August 2015 notwithstanding that the matter was exposed earlier in the same month. It was recommended that casuality returns should be issued to terminate housing allowance for all the judges who are not eligible. “Recovery of housing allowance overpayment to Honourable Judges who were not eligible should be effected, immediately.
Management should ensure that monthly reconciliation of salary payments is carried out to detect and prevent payments to non-eligible officers.” The auditors said the AoJ failed to issue casualty returns to terminate payments of housing allowance upon occupation of institutional houses by judges and no monthly reconciliation was done to detect payments of allowance to non-eligible officers.
“Poor records keeping has adversely affected completion of the audit exercise. The total extent of overpayment will be reflected in the final report after reviewing payments for all the Honourable Judges.”
The interim internal audit report has revealed that Justice Key Dingake had wrongfully received P200,467.95 over a period of about three years. Justice Modiri Letsididi had wrongly received P494,323.40 over a period of about eight years, while Justice Mercy Garekwe had wrongfully received P123,281.10 over a period of about two years. Justice Ranier Busang had wrongfully received P105,468.70 over a period of about two years. The total amount disbursed is P923,543.20.
Recently, President Ian Khama suspended the four judges and appointed a tribunal to inquire into their conduct. Last week the four filed an urgent application to interdict the sitting of the tribunal. They also want their suspensions set aside.
Justice Tebogo Tau yesterday postponed the matter to September 28 to enable the parties to exchange documents.
The applicants shall file their replying affidavits on September 22. They will also exchange heads of arguments on September 24.