{"id":17643,"date":"2022-12-05T09:19:18","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T09:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/corruption-was-used-too-loosely-rijkenberg"},"modified":"2022-12-05T09:19:18","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T09:19:18","slug":"corruption-was-used-too-loosely-rijkenberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/corruption-was-used-too-loosely-rijkenberg","title":{"rendered":"CORRUPTION WAS USED TOO LOOSELY \u2013 RIJKENBERG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Eswatini. <\/strong><\/span>The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, said in as much as he does not dispute that there is corruption, the word was used too loosely during a parliament debate last week.<\/b><\/p>\n

The minister said the figures associated with corruption by the legislators were too high and he was not prepared to accept that those funds were all lost through corruption.<\/p>\n

He was responding to questions from this publication following submissions made by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which revealed that a total of E7.4 billion in public funds was lost through unauthorised expenditure by government ministries since 2018.<\/p>\n

The committee further revealed that at present, a total of E91 million was lost through corruption on a monthly basis, amounting to about E1.2 billion annually.<\/p>\n

According to the public accounts committee, about E330 million under the Guardian Fund had been lost through the Master of the High Court\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

This raised an alarm among legislators who demanded that the intended probe that was dismissed by the judiciary should be commissioned.<\/p>\n

The PAC further revealed that the misappropriation of public funds and corrupt practices cut across all 21 ministries and cited lack of control measures within the government system as the main cause.<\/p>\n

The minister emphasised that he was not denying that there was corruption in the country, which needed to be addressed, however, the amount of funds associated with corruption in the debate could not all have been lost through corrupt practices. He conceded that there were challenges faced by government with regards to spending of public funds that were correctly brought to light by the auditor general’s office.<\/p>\n

The minister said these include non-adherence to proper government procurement procedures and not following proper procedures to spend money by the respective ministries and departments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe word ‘corruption’ is thrown around too loosely with these large amounts. Most of the issues raised are due to not proper processes used to spend money, procurement rules broken, unaccounted for expenses, to name a few, but these do not necessarily mean corruption,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Adding, the minister said he was sure that there was corruption in Eswatini but not the kind of numbers mentioned during the debate. Further he stated that in some cases, there were no proper supporting documents to account for public funds and money was spent without necessarily having all the required documentation.<\/p>\n

He said the report also goes through the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) and the police to consider corruption issues.<\/p>\n

The minister assured that the ministry of finance was working to bring in IFMIS and eProcurement to reduce corruption and over expenditure.<\/p>\n

Other means adopted to control public funds usage was shutting down trading accounts such as the central transport organisation, putting better controls at the Phalala Fund and only issuing lump sum contracts. \u201cWe are already seeing a huge reduction in over expenditure that was possibly corruption,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Eswatini<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, said in as much as he does not dispute that there is corruption, the word was used too loosely during a parliament debate last week. The minister said the figures associated with corruption by the legislators were too high and he was not prepared to accept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":17642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,12],"tags":[234,248,249],"class_list":["post-17643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-head-lines","category-policy","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-eswatini","tag-eswatini"],"yoast_head":"\nCORRUPTION WAS USED TOO LOOSELY \u2013 RIJKENBERG - Eswatini<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/eswatini\/all-news\/corruption-was-used-too-loosely-rijkenberg\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CORRUPTION WAS USED TOO LOOSELY \u2013 RIJKENBERG\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, said in as much as he does not dispute that there is corruption, the word was used too loosely during a parliament debate last week. 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