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During yesterday's Portfolio Committee meeting on Home Affairs it was revealed that R126 million is owed by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) to the Government Printing Works (GPW) for outstanding payments dating back to April 2009. If no payment is received by the GPW within the next three months, the GPW has made it clear that they will not be able to continue to print passports.

This is because GPW will not be able to afford to continue to order the polycarbonate paper needed for the documents, or the thread to bind them.

GPW CEO Mr Tom Moyane stated yesterday that the DHA has now consistently failed to make payments over an 11 month period. I will be writing to the minister later today to ask for her urgent intervention in this matter.

The Department of Home Affairs' turnaround strategy is clearly failing to address the critical issues facing the Department and is allowing new issues to cause further damage to the department's ability to deliver on its mandate. Government departments simply cannot operate like this, placing immense financial strain on the service providers who rely on timeous payments to meet their own obligations, including the payment of employees.

Further financial mismanagement was identified in the DHA 2008/09 annual report, where the Auditor General revealed that departmental revenue amounting to R356 million could not be accurately assessed due to the lack of an audit trail and serious inefficiency of the accounting officer. Irregular expenditure to the amount of R198,2 million was also recorded.