Ceta's council gets to see forensic audit

pretoria - the second forensic audit report commissioned by the construction education and training authority (ceta) into alleged corruption and fraud by some of its officials, employers and service providers is to be released to council members this week.

however, ceta chairman narius moloto declined to comment on whether the report had found any evidence of corruption and fraud.

he was unable to comment on whether the findings would be released publicly.

"that is up to the council and i don't want to pre-empt the council debate," he said.

the release of this forensic report and the failure of ceta to table a previous forensic audit report conducted by deloitte has been an issue of friction between the ceta and master builders south africa (mbsa), the national body representing master builders' associations, and led to mbsa being suspended from participating in ceta activities for a period last year.

mbsa claimed that the contents of the deloitte forensic report had been disregarded.

ceta launched a crackdown on corruption among employers and skills training providers in october last year.

among the allegations were that some training providers were misappropriating funds; falsifying claims for "ghost" learners; and shortening the official learnership courses while charging for the full period.

mbsa and ceta are still sparring on a number of issues despite claims by moloto that the issues raised by the mbsa had been resolved internally with all stakeholders.

mbsa has attacked ceta for a lack of financial management and control within the organisation.

a damning report on ceta's financial statements by auditor-general shauket fakie was tabled in parliament last week. faukie said ceta was technically insolvent.


ceta had a net liability of r9.8 million and an annual net deficit of r192.45 million at end-march this year.

fakie issued an audit opinion disclaiming the financial statements because of his inability to verify important data relating to ceta's expenditure on promoting learnerships.

ceta confirmed last year it had overcommitted itself by r250 million on learnerships and skills programmes.

pierre fourie, the chief executive of mbsa, denied on friday that all the issues raised by the mbsa had been resolved by ceta and claimed the previously elected ceta office bearers had made themselves available for a third term, while the constitution explicitly limited the term of office to "a second term".

moloto described these claims as "rubbish". mbsa had "deliberately chosen to misinterpret" ceta's constitution and if mbsa still had an issue after all the discussions that had taken place, it should raise these with ceta.

moloto added that the issues raised by the auditor-general had already been tackled and that these related to ceta having more learnerships in its system than funds.

he said the reason for the forensic report and investigation was to "get to the bottom of all the learnerships and skills programmes that got into the system. that should be able to help us.

"we now have integrated management systems in ceta and systems that talk to each other," moloto said.

"the double payment problem is not going to be there anymore. it's been haunting us over time because our systems were not good," he said.