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The Gauteng Health Department incurred R3 045 756 000 in irregular expenditure from April to September last year, which brings its accumulated irregular expenditure over the years to an astounding R19 billion.

This was revealed at a meeting of the Gauteng Legislature’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) last week on Friday.

The vast majority of this irregular expenditure is due to the corrupt PPE contracts, and also some dubious spending on infrastructure to increase beds for the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2019/20 the irregular expenditure was R2.319 billion, of which R633 million was due to irregular security contracts.

These amounts are added to irregular expenditure from previous years which has accumulated to a total of R19 billion. This is about one-third of last year’s R58 billion provincial health budget.

It is tragic that the Gauteng Health Department is a habitual offender with poor financial management over many years.

There have been many failed promises to fix the finances in this department and the continuing lack of financial controls is what enabled the massive PPE corruption.

I hope that the latest horrendous corruption is the wake-up call for fundamental reform to ensure clean and effective spending.

Issued by The DA