MTBPS: Political parties call for govt spending reviews to be ramped up

While there’s been broad support for government spending reviews that have so far yielded R6.7 billion in savings by closing or scaling down low-priority and underperforming programmes, political parties say this initiative must be ramped up. 

Build One South Africa (BOSA) leader Mmusi Maimane, who also chairs Parliament’s appropriations committee, said that while it was necessary to root out those defrauding the social grants system, the clampdown needs to go much further.

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"The real double-dippers is when you’ve got high levels of corruption, where you’ve got agencies that are delivering nothing, SETAs that are delivering nothing, departments that are showing wasteful expenditure, until we deal with those issues, then all the spending reviews can end up being narrow. We need political capital to make bold decisions."  

Rise Mzansi’s Songezo Zibi, who chairs Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA), agreed that spending reviews need to be expanded and also to include other spheres of government where millions of rand are wasted on project management. 

"Companies that perform work for government get paid without the project milestones they are supposed to reach and you end up with a white elephant. These projects are delayed, they cost more money, we can’t continue to do that."

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