Over the last three years the Gauteng Government has saved R414 million by cutting back on catering, accommodation and corporate branding.

In the 2015/2016 financial year and additional R386 million was saved by nipping fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the bud through reducing interest on overdue accounts.

These resources from these savings have been redirected to the core business of government.

Gauteng departments have been guided by National Treasury circulars to cut costs on non-core expenses. Non-core expenses are primarily targeted at government itself rather than spending targeted at our citizens. Examples include catering, corporate branding, accommodation and travel expenses.

Gauteng MEC for Finance, Barbara Creecy while delivering her speech in the Gauteng Legislature earlier today again reiterated that cost savings strategies have never included cutting back on services.

“It has never been the Provincial Government Policy to save costs by cutting back on services to our citizens. In fact, every effort has been made to protect the budgets of Health, Education and Social Development. A simple study of where additional resources have been allocated over the last two and half years will support this argument,” said Creecy.

Government is currently exploring further measures to contain costs in the following areas:

• Telecommunications as a result of the implementing Voice over IP;
• Introducing common GPG wide standards for the purchase, maintenance and scrapping of ICT devices and
• The implementation of the Standard Infrastructure Procurement Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management (SIPDM) to enforce cost norms that have been agreed upon at sector level in all our infrastructure projects.

In addition, the Gauteng government remains committed to rooting out fraud and corruption in all government programs.

Over the past year, Treasury has re-engineered it’s Forensic Services which has enabled the department to:

• Reduce the case backlog  by two thirds;
• Improve in the implementation of recommendations which has resulted in 125 employees facing disciplinary action;
• implement a centralised case management system;
• Build a forensic laboratory with digital forensic tools to assist our investigations; and
• Recruit forensic investigators and train existing staff with the support of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Issued by Gauteng Provincial Government