'Kucangene' at Education Ministry - PS

LOBAMBA – Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Education and Training Bheki Gama, says there is a lot of confusion in the ministry, saying ‘kucangene’ in vernacular.

Gama made submissions before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where he shared that he was hoping there would be improvement in the operations of the ministry this year, but things were seemingly taking a turn for the worse.

Gama, as the Controlling Officer of the ministry, was asked by PAC Chairman and Mhlangatane MP Madala Mhlanga why the ministry delayed submitting responses to the Auditor General’s (AG) Office and to the PAC on queries highlighted by the AG in his audits.

Gama recalled that last year, he did say to the committee that they were divided, using the vernacular word ‘kubuhlaluhlalu’ but nothing had improved since then.

Recommendations

Gama said in his observation, the recommendations made by the committee in collaboration with the AG’s Office were not done to the acceptable level, stating that it was easy for some officials within the ministry to make commitments but fail to deliver on their mandate.

“I was hoping that by this year, we would be at a certain level, but we haven’t started. My prayer was that by the time I leave, some would have grasped how things are done, but they have not. We are failing to stick to timelines,” he said.

Gama also submitted that the sad part was that it was the controlling officer who was made to pay a fine when there are irregularities observed by the AG in his audit, not the entire ministry. He apologised to the committee for the late submission of the responses stating that such would not happen in future.

Mhlanga reminded the ministry that the AG’s Office forwarded communication on March this year, concerning the queries and the ministry had plenty of time to forward responses but only did that yesterday.

Financial Auditor at the AG’s Office Ashmond Ngwenya, highlighted that given the bulky responses that the ministry forwarded in the eleventh hour, they did not have enough time to go through it, making it difficult to contribute meaningfully on the queries.  On that note, he requested that they should be given reasonable time as an office to go through the responses and contribute from an informed position and that resulted to the committee members requesting for the session to be adjourned.

Zombodze Emuva MP Ntando Mkhonta, opposed the adjournment of the PAC session with the ministry, stating that they should continue now that the ministry was before the committee, but he was not seconded, and the session was eventually adjourned.

Before the adjournment, Mhlanga said the ministry will be alerted on the next session but revealed that they still had a date with the ministry this coming Friday on other relevant issues which shall go ahead as scheduled.

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