Mr Speaker, comrades and hon members, from the onset let me thank my comrades in the committee and our dedicated staff for their revolutionary committee spirit displayed consistently when dealing with our work. There is much to do, and only collective effort has seen us through. We are presenting to the House reports on the Departments of Arts and Culture, Sport and Recreation, Boxing SA, the National Arts Council, the SA Heritage Resources Agency, and the Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority.
The recommendations we are making mark a substantial departure from previous practices, in that they introduce the element of continual monitoring, which was not there before, that is a requirement for quarterly progress reports on corrective measures. This, however, places an obligation on the House and the committee to be able to monitor compliance with timeframes.
From our side, as the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Scopa, we have done all our planning to monitor compliance, but will still look to the Speaker's Office for leadership and guidance. From our side, we have every intention of coming back to the House in case departments and entities fail to comply with the stated timeframes.
The Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority got a disclaimer of audit opinion and has ongoing issues of concern, as its liabilities exceeded its assets by R19,9 million - and there is a lot more that is not going right.
Boxing SA, the National Arts Council and the SA Heritage Resources Agency all received qualified audit opinions. Transversal issues in these entities include material losses, expenditure management challenges, compliance with laws, irregular expenditure, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Those of the Departments of Arts and Culture, and Sport and Recreation are all unqualified, but with emphasis of matter. Issues of concern to Scopa include expenditure management; irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure; supply chain management issues; and asset management.
We are particularly looking forward to the report of the Special Investigating Unit on the investigations into the Department of Arts and Culture. This department has unauthorised expenditure of R41,7 million and irregular expenditure of R64 million.
Even though those of the departments are not qualified, as Scopa we are concerned that many of our national departments remain in the space of unqualified with emphasis of matter. There is no movement towards clean audits. In the past financial year, only three departments got clean audits, with 30 departments in the space of unqualified audits with emphasis of matter.
We want to urge that there should be structured co-ordination between ourselves as Scopa and the portfolio committees to ensure that officials are held accountable for noncompliance with legislation and regulations. We thus present to this House our reports, and thank members in advance for their anticipated support. Thank you.
There was no debate.