Between January and March this year, government national departments owed government suppliers more than R52 million after failing to settle invoices older than 30 days.
According to the Public Service Commission’s quarterly bulletin titled The Pulse of the Public Service for the period January 1, 2024, to March 31, 2024, six national departments owe suppliers a total of R52,840,227 from 1,427 unpaid invoices older than 30 days and unpaid.
Between January and March 2023, the number of unpaid invoices by government national departments was 1,149.
Department doesn’t do justice to invoices
From this year’s unpaid invoices, the department of justice and constitutional development owed suppliers R42,666,698 from 1,375 unpaid invoices.
The department of public works and infrastructure’s trading account owed suppliers R10,066,089 from 39 unpaid invoices and the department of water and sanitation’s trading account owed R24,174 from seven unpaid invoices.
The department of tourism owed R9 700 from three invoices and the department of international relations and cooperation owed R57,500 from two unpaid invoices.
Lastly, was the department of social development owed R16,116 from one unpaid invoice.
“The total number of invoices older than 30 days and not paid by national departments as at the end of the 2023/24 financial year amounted to 1 427 invoices, representing a regression of 278 invoices or 24%, when compared to the total number of invoices older than 30 days and not paid as at the end of the 2022/23 financial year, which amounted to 1 149 invoices.
“The above departments are the main contributing departments towards the late and/or non-payment of invoices.
Misfiled and misplaced invoices
“The most common reasons provided by departments for the late and/or non-payment of invoices vary from misfiled, misplaced or unrecorded invoices to inadequate internal control deficiencies.
“The National Treasury has since provided recommendations to assist departments in addressing the identified root causes for late and/or non-payment of invoices and to ensure improvement in compliance with the requirement to pay suppliers’ invoices within the prescribed period of 30 days,” said Public Service Commissioner (PSC) Anele Gxoyiya, who was speaking at the PSC media briefing on Monday.
The media briefing took place at the GCIS Media Offices in Hatfield, Pretoria.
Gxoyiya was presenting the Public Service Commission’s quarterly bulletin titled The Pulse of the Public Service for the period January 1, 2024, to March 31, 2024.
Accounting officers must be held accountable
“We are calling on executive authorities to take action against those accounting officers who deliberately fail to pay service providers on time, and they do not even communicate with them.
“Those accounting officers employ service providers and when the time comes to pay, they say they have cash flow problems. It is misconduct for you as an accounting officer to appoint someone to a delivery service when you know that the department has cash flow problems.
“When the time for payment comes and people are not paid, stern action should be taken against the accounting officers.
“In July last year, when delivering the Pulse [of the Public Service Commission], we advised that we are calling on the DPSA [department of public service and administration] to withhold the salaries of accounting officers not paying service providers for a month and let us see what will happen.
These accounting officers are getting paid on a monthly basis, but poor people who are employed by these suppliers do not receive their salaries when suppliers are not paid. Those poor people do not have anywhere to go and get their salaries.
“So, until there is a will to act against those people who continuously and deliberately fail to pay service providers, service providers will continue to suffer. Some businesses have been liquidated and others owe SARS [South African Revenue Service] because they have not been paid by government departments,” said Gxoyiya.
