In her latest report, the Auditor General noted that the abundance of funds from road traffic fines had “led to misuse by the making of advances to other services of government”.
According to the report, during the financial year ended March 31, 2015, only P71,200 was reimbursed, with another P5.4 million reimbursed before that. Government allocated the Ipelegeng programme P580.6 million in 2014 and P635.6 million in 2015, being amongst the single biggest funded items in the successive budgets. The Auditor General said the funding from the road traffic fines had been made while waiting for availability of fund disbursement for the Ipelegeng budget. Meanwhile, government spent P6.1 million for damages accruing from 332 accidents during the 2015 financial year, the Auditor General reported. “There were altogether 332 government motor vehicles involved in accidents with damage cost of P6.08m, out of which 46 with a damage of P980,382, were attributable to and recovered from third party motorists,” the Auditor General said. While these accidents were reported to the Finance Ministry during 2015, the report reveals that most of them occurred as far back as 2012 and 2013 pointing to delays in the process of these matters.
