The legislative oversight bodies in ensuring public financial accountability and responsibility

Abstract

Although endowed with rich oversight bodies, policies and Acts, the state of financial management in South African government departments is illustrated in a number of clean qualified audits. The media and the Auditor-General’s report are continuously reporting on arbitrary financial practices, corruption, fruitless expenditure, tender rigging and inability to spend allocated funds to mention a few of the problems government experiences in its financial management. Financial management in the public service, if not addressed holistically, may hamper, rather than assist, government departments with the speedy delivery of services. The research study questioned the extent to which the legislative oversight bodies successfully ensure public financial accountability and responsibility. The objective of this study was not to evaluate the performance of institutions or any public financial management offices, but rather to assess the capacity of the public financial management systems themselves to support sound fiscal policy and financial management. The Constitution requires members of the Cabinet to provide Parliament with full and regular reports concerning matters under their control. The Constitution further requires the legislature to provide for effective mechanisms of oversight and to ensure that executive organs of state in government are accountable to the legislatures. There are instances where parliamentary committees’ reports and recommendations were ignored by government departments. Such actions can be a threat to democracy and good governance. Therefore Parliament and the legislature have a critical role to play in overseeing effective performance by all organs of state. Results of the study indicated that the turnover rate of members of parliamentary committees such as Standing Committee on Public Accounts remains a challenge and this impact the effectiveness of these committees. The results also revealed that it is a challenge to retain the directors-general in most government department. High turnover rate of directors general is a challenge as directors-general are accounting officers of Government departments. High turnover rate of directors-general could bring a perception that there is a lack of accountability and could be seen as threat to the democracy.