The African News Network7, in what it called a "Big Expose: Treasury's fall from grace," has blamed former finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his administration for the alleged failure of a project called the Integrated Financial Management System.
The channel claimed that an internal treasury audit into government's Integrated Financial Management System allegedly revealed how treasury committed 54 financial misconducts in just 70 months.
It further claimed that no one had been held accountable for these alleged transactions and trail of mismanagements.
"Millions of taxpayer's money was lost due to the irregularities including wasteful expenditure and duplicate payments."
The television station explained that the IFMS was allegedly cleared in 2005 for supplying human resource financial payroll and business intelligence management.
The project was allegedly meant to integrate all centre and provincial government department's financial management processes.
The news channel claimed that seven years later reviews found that the IFMS system was inadequate and a revised plan was accepted by cabinet in 2013.
An internal review was apparently ordered in 2015 to measure the efficiency of the IFMS payments as well and on September 11, 2015, the IFMS review report was filed with the then DG, deputy minister and minister.
On treasury's alleged misconduct, ANN7 claimed that the audit exposed the gross financial mismanagement of treasury's IFMS project.
"Forty nine of the 54 findings of the audit in the IFMS project were identified as catastrophic. Findings also included inadequate payment procedures, lack of project cost monitoring and excessive expenditure in ineffective resource management."
Panelists alleged that the mismanagement of funds in treasury happened under the watch of the former finance minister and his team and thus he should be held responsible the project's alleged failure.
It was their view that the former minister and his administration should pay back the allegedly wasted taxpayer's money. -- News24