As businesses face a harsh economic climate in the Northern Cape, the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the province demanded urgent answers from the MEC for COGHSTA, Bentley Vass, on his department’s apparent refusal to honour invoices for March 2025.
A letter from the Chief Financial Officer informed all service providers two days ago that the department will not pay any invoices for March 2025. This is not the usual delay experienced at the end of a financial year, where a department will inform service providers of specific cut-off dates and where invoices submitted after a certain time will only be processed in the new financial year. This is a flat-out refusal to pay for any invoices delivered in March 2025, without giving any assurance as to when payment can be expected.
I wrote to the MEC to determine his reasons for this decision, to establish a timeframe for the eventual payment, and to find clarity on how this non-payment will affect future budgets. Using the 2025/26 budget to pay for goods and services delivered in 2024/25 creates an unsustainable cycle of debt that undermines the department’s ability to provide adequate housing, deliver title deeds, or assist municipalities with service delivery.
SMMEs depending on timely payment from departments will suffer. This is similar to the difficulties created for SMMEs by the non-disbursement of essential funds to schools by the Northern Cape Department of Education from September last year, which led to SMMEs waiting for more than six months on payment.
It is also unclear if the department can afford to pay its municipal accounts at this time, even though it continually emphasises the importance of regular payments by provincial organs of state. It is a bitter irony that the same department entrusted with oversight of local government might contribute to cash constraints and eventual collapse of local municipalities.
I will be using other mechanisms at the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature to pursue transparency and financial accountability from the department. We cannot allow public funds to be squandered and for service providers to pay the price of departmental recklessness, especially not when four out of ten people in the province struggle to find employment.