The minister of employment and labour, Nomakhosazana Meth, has attributed multiple instances of unaccounted expenditure in her department to system failures linked to the National Treasury.
This emerged in a parliamentary reply to MKP MP Hazel Htombenhle Mbele, who asked what expenditure remained unaccounted for, or was unprocessed, by December 31 2025 amid concerns the figure exceeded R300m, and that benefits surpassed budget allocations.
Meth said the issues stemmed from government departments changing versions of the Basic Accounting System (BAS).
“With effect from April 1 2025, departments migrated from version 5 to 6 of the Basic Accounting System. During this ... implementation process, the department of employment and labour experienced challenges with the activation of new codes, which resulted in large volumes of Persal [Personell and Salary System] exceptions,” she said.
Meth said that during the clearing of these exceptions by the National Treasury, duplicate transactions were created, which resulted in what appeared to be over-expenditure.
“These challenges resulted in the department not being able to produce interim financial statements,” the minister added.
According to Meth, the problems continued throughout the 2025/26 financial year and were only resolved in March 2026 after engagements with the National Treasury.
“From these engagements in March 2026, it was identified that although these errors were fixed by the National Treasury at item level, further corrections were required at the responsibility and programme levels,” she said.
She also said that corrective measures had been implemented before year-end.
“The department processed corrective journals before the closure of the financial year which resolved the overstated expenditure in the books of the department and the understated expenditure for its entities (Unemployment Insurance Fund and Compensation Fund),” said Meth.
Mbele also asked about the causes of the financial control failures and whether any officials had been held personally accountable.
Meth maintained that the failures were not internal to her department. “The financial control failures were not internal but emanated from the BAS v5 to v6 implementation process, which was managed by the National Treasury. The overstatement of expenditure was a result of duplicated transactions which were created by the system controllers at the National Treasury,” she said.
When asked who had been held accountable, the minister responded: “Not applicable. As stated above, the financial control failures were mainly at the National Treasury.”
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