The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) is making progress on payments to service providers and ensuring that service providers are paid within the stipulated 30 day period.

The DPWI and Property Management Trading Entity (PMTE), also under the DPWI, handles and pays on average 1 130 and 11 700 number of invoices on a monthly basis respectively.

“The department used to have more than 11 500 unpaid invoices over 30 days before the introduction of Reapatala Tracking System by myself and the respective teams in the department. I must express my thanks to the Finance teams, ICT teams and other branches for their excellent work on improving this vital area of work,” said the Minister in a statement on Thursday.

Reapatala (“we are paying”) is a platform where all invoices of the department are internally received and managed to ensure effective tracking of invoices to be paid timeously.

“This system has managed to ensure effective tracking of invoices to be paid timeously. I am tracking this work within the department on a weekly basis and have noted a steady decline in overdue 30-day payments.

“We are at all times striving for zero late payments however in some cases there is good reason for late payments when there are discrepancies with invoices which need to be clarified.

“As part of a range of efforts to ensure that we pay service providers on time and minimize late payments, weekly meetings with our regional offices and regular interventions by myself and various teams in the department, through The Reapatala reports have resulted in few overdue payments by DPWI to service providers,” De Lille said.

The issue of late payments was among the main issues tackled by the Minister when she took office in June 2019.

“At the time there were around 2 084 late payments on a weekly basis on the system beyond the 30 day stipulated payment period.”

The department also instituted consequence management for officials found responsible for late payments without good reason. The number of consequence management processes implemented was for 166 invoices involving 180 officials between April 2021 and 28 February 2022.

For the week between 12 and 19 August, the department processed 1 686 invoices (95.4%) on time and within the 30-day payment period.

“I am also pleased that most of the DPWI regional office such as the Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria head office, Johannesburg, Kimberley, Mthatha, Nelspruit and Gqeberha have no unpaid invoices beyond the 30 day period in the week between 12 and 19 August 2022,” De Lille said.

Source: South African Government News Agency