Commissioner Anele Gxoyiya said twenty-three departments were unable to comply with timeous payment of invoices amounting to R1 billion.
The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development was unable to pay R48 million to service providers, making it the main culprit in terms of national government departments failing to comply with timely payments.
While the Justice department should be ensuring that everyone abides by legal provisions, they had 4 554 late invoices, the Public Service Commission (PSC) said in expressing its disappointment.
According to the PSC, Public Works and Infrastructure owed R8.4m and the National Department of Health owed R8.2m.
Commissioner Anele Gxoyiya briefed the media on Monday on the quarterly Pulse of the Public Service bulletin.
Twenty-three departments were unable to comply with timeous payment of invoices amounting to R1 billion.
“What is of great concern, out of 40 national departments, only 17 fully complied with the requirement on timeous payments in Quarter 2.
This was an improvement from 15 compared to Quarter 1 of the 2023/24 financial year. This cannot be celebrated because it’s not even 50% of the national departments.
“Although the number of invoices and the value cannot be determined with information at the PSC’s disposal, the departments are encouraged to maintain this performance and pay all legitimate invoices from suppliers within 30 days as required by the Public Finance Management Act.
“We also call on accounting officers to institute consequence management to those who fail to adhere to these policy directives and executive authorities to act against accounting officers who fail to act.
None or late payments means service providers were able to pay their own employees,” said Gxoyiya.
The PSC was referencing data from the second quarter as the third quarter has not been published yet.
“The National Treasury made the information available late, and we are unable to publish that information.They have not yet made the information for the third quarter of last year available.
“This is a problem for us as the PSC and for the sake of transparency we needed to avail the information at our disposal in relation to payment of service providers,” he said.
The provinces recorded 48 478 late payments to the value of R5.9bn, the Eastern Cape provincial departments again reported the highest number of unpaid invoices at 26 491.
“The most common reasons provided by the national and provincial departments for the late and/or non-payment of invoices included blame on inadequate budgets, capacity, poor internal controls, lack of internal capacity and disputes with suppliers on invoices received.
“Non-payment of invoices has a huge implication for small businesses that rely on cash flow for survival. In the absence thereof, the majority are forced to close their businesses. Although the government is under financial austerity measures, invoices for services rendered must be paid,” said Gxoyiya.
As at December 31, 2023 the commission registered 382 grievances including 118 carried over from the previous financial year.
Gxoyiya mentioned they were also witnessing an increase in complaints regarding personnel practices in government departments including irregular staff appointments, transfers, and qualifications of those appointed to various positions.
Cape Times