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17 April 2008

As part of heeding the call by the Free State Premier Comrade Beatrice Marshoff in her State of the Province address, the Free State Treasury, as the custodian of prudent financial management is working tirelessly to ensure that provincial government departments, municipalities and other public entities implement prudent financial management.

We take this opportunity to congratulate the five departments that have achieved unqualified audits for the 2006/07 financial year. Our effort to support departments in beefing up their financial management capacity will continue.

We will relentlessly continue with our crusade to assist departments with financial management capacity. Through the implementation of financial management bilaterals, the continuation of the practice of producing monthly treasury oversight monitoring reports, the Free State has commendably been selected by National Treasury as the most improved province in terms of financial management.

During the previous financial year we have witnessed a significant improvement in reporting requirement emanating from the Municipal Finance Management Act. This can in the main be attributed to the capacity building initiatives and technical support provided by Provincial Treasury to Free State Municipalities.
We are upbeat that these interventions will go a long in making local government function better and enhance service delivery.

Furthermore, as indicated in the department's Vote speech the monitoring of financial management at provincial public entities has commenced from April 2007. In these entities we have already covered the following areas: bank reconciliations, expenditure, revenue management, asset management, risk management and internal audit.

Since 1994, our country has embarked on a process of fundamental change, the reconstruction and development of the country and the broadening of service provision to include all South Africans.

Quite clearly, these challenges require a contingent of competent and committed public service professionals who understand the policy direction of government and what is required from public servants.

Our strategic objectives of building an effective and caring government require that we build our human resources skills and capacity in all spheres of government to manage transformation, by identifying gaps in capacity and introducing specific programmes to address them.

As we alluded in the speech, the Free State Treasury is committed to building much needed skills and aims to enhance human resources management not only of the department but also of the Province as a whole.

Significant improvement is discernible in our department's human resource management strategy. This strategy has yielded positive result in that we have seen a phenomenal decrease in the department's vacancy rate from 35,5 percent in 2006/07 to 18,5 percent in 2007/08.

As part of our commitment of improving skills within and outside the department we have funded 28 part time bursaries and 29 fulltime bursaries for the 2007 academic year at the cost of R1,5 million.

Finally as part of our humble contribution to alleviate grinding poverty, fight joblessness and building the skills of unemployed young people, the department has enlisted the services of 22 interns through our Internship Programme in 2007/08. We are pleased to report that 18 of these interns are now part of the Provincial Treasury permanent staff establishment.

Thank You

Enquiries:
Howard Ndaba
Tel: 051 405 4229

Issued by: Free State Provincial Government
17 April 2008
Source: Free State Department of Treasury, Free State Provincial Government (http://www.fs.gov.za/main.asp)