Despite having all the forensic services to conduct them, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s office has not started on the process of conducting provincial lifestyle audits on Health Department officials.
This was the admission of Gauteng Health and Wellness MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko to her colleagues in the legislature, where she said the audits – which were to have been done for 2021/2022 – had not been started.
She said: “The department has requested the Office of the Premier to assist with the lifestyle audit for 2021/2022 for the officials, as potential candidates for lifestyle audit based on incongruity between their wealth, asset accumulation and remuneration. The department also identified some officials through an investigation request from one of the district offices in 2023.”
Speaking on this after they posed the questions on the audits, the DA said it all had to do with protecting comrades.
“This shows yet again that Premier Panyaza Lesufi is all bark and no bite. He has promised lifestyle audits but won’t do them because they could implicate ANC cadres,” DA health spokesperson Jack Bloom said.
Other provinces, among then the DA-run Western Cape government, took them seriously, and expedited them, he said.
Lifestyle audits are a vital tool in fighting corruption, and they are conducted as a pro-active measure to identify possible corruption, fraud and/or other related offences.
They were declared as compulsory for government departments to conduct lifestyle audits in April 2021, and, said the Department of Public Service and Administration, departments were to conduct lifestyle audits as guided by their regulations, meaning they they had to follow a risk-based approach for it to be a legitimate fraud prevention and detection mechanism.
“A guide was adopted to assist departments,” the department said. The guide clarified the three areas of conducting of lifestyle audits: mandates, who should conduct it, principles, execution of functions and role-players involved; the roles and responsibilities – risk management, ethics office, investigations, auditors; and the lifestyle audit methodology.
“In its simplest form, it is an amalgamation of reports from a variety of databases which provides a snapshot of an employee’s life, conducted by the ethics officer to detect wrongdoing/unexplained wealth (lifestyle review). The wrong-doing/unexplained wealth has to be investigated to clarify the unexplained wealth or to find evidence of wrongdoing,” the department said.
“When a crime is detected it is referred by the department, to the police, after which a disciplinary process starts. In the event of complex cases, the investigation may include a lifestyle audit.”
National, provincial and government components should conduct lifestyle audits, which were a decentralised function – it was the responsibility of heads of departments, the department said.
“Lifestyle audits must be conducted as part of a department’s system of risk management.”
The DA said: “There should be no delay in implementing lifestyle audits, to root out the pervasive corruption that leads to poor treatment of patients in crumbling hospitals.”
Pretoria News