Auditor-General raises flag on Health Department’s financial status
The Auditor-General has flagged some serious concerns around the financial health of the provincial education and health departments.
Tsakani Maluleke released the report on the audit outcomes of national and provincial departments and their entities today.
"On the departments of health one of the major concerns is the dominance of these litigation claims, medical negligence claims which have the impact of eating away at the ability of provincial departments to deliver service in the forthcoming year."
"Because they do not budget for these medical negligence claims whatever they end up paying this year is going to take away their ability to fill the concedes."
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She says they've also picked financial health risks from the financial statements of different departments.
"We found that two-thirds of them had some or other indication of financial strain. We found that 12% of them reported themselves in their financial statements that they were concerned about their ability to continue to operate."
"We found that there were 2% of them with financial statement where we could not conduct that level of assessment."
Maluleke says irregular expenditure decreased to R54 billion from R66 billion the previous year.
She says overall, audit outcomes improved during this period.
