Payments to service providers are being made more often by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI), who also makes sure that they are made within the allotted 30-day window.
Each month, the DPWI and Property Management Trading Entity (PMTE), which are both part of the DPWI, manage and pay, respectively, 1 130 and 11 700 bills.
Before I and the other teams in the department implemented the Reapatala Tracking System, the department had more than 11,500 unpaid bills that were older than 30 days. In a statement on Thursday, the Minister stated, “I must express my gratitude to the Finance teams, ICT teams, and other branches for their tremendous efforts on strengthening this crucial area of work.
Reapatala, which means “we are paying,” is a platform where all departmental bills are received and maintained internally to enable efficient monitoring of invoices that need to be paid on time.
This method has been successful in ensuring efficient monitoring of timely payment of bills. Weekly, I’m keeping track of this work throughout the department, and I’ve seen a gradual decrease in 30-day past-due payments.
“While we always strive for 0% late payments, there are situations when late payments are justified when there are invoice problems that need to be resolved.
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 as part of a variety of efforts to ensure that we pay service providers on time and minimize late payments, De Lille said.
When the Minister started office in June 2019, one of the key topics she focused on was the problem of late payments.
“At the time, there were around 2 084 late payments every week on the system after the 30 day payment deadline had passed.”
The department also implemented consequence management for personnel identified in charge of unjustified payment delays. Between April 2021 and February 28th, 2022, 166 invoices involving 180 officials had consequence management systems in place.
The department completed 1 686 invoices (95.4%) for the week of August 12 to August 19 on time and within the allotted 30 days for payment.
De Lille added: “I am particularly delighted that the majority of the DPWI regional offices, including the Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria head office, Johannesburg, Kimberley, Mthatha, Nelspruit, and Gqeberha, have no outstanding bills beyond the 30 day period in the week between August 12 and August 19, 2022.