Cape Town – Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi wants Parliament to allow the Government Printing Works (GPW) to submit its annual report next May after it lost critical data to prepare its financial statements for audit purposes.
Motsoaledi made the request in a letter to National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and National Council of Provinces chairperson Amos Masondo.
He said the GPW, the entity providing printing services to all organs of state, experienced a power surge which led to a hardware failure on February 4.
“Failure of the hardware called EVA affected a number of systems because it hosted multiple servers, including those of the tenders, eGazettes, Dynamics AX (financial management system) and Dynamics print, emails and other technical systems.
“GPW subsequently lost critical data dating back from November 2019 which was contained in the system, as a result of this failure,” the minister said.
Motsoaledi added that despite all efforts to recover the data, GPW was not in a position to produce and submit credible annual financial statements to the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA) by the May 31 deadline.
“The loss of critical financial data directly impacted on the preparation and production of credible financial statements.”
He said in light of what GPW experienced, the entity would not be able to make submission of its annual report for the 2020-21 financial year.
“GPW has, however, pulled all efforts together to ensure recovery and rebuilding of its financial data in order to be enabled to prepare credible financial statements, and be ready for the next audit by AGSA.
“A clear project plan with key milestones has been developed and is used to track progress on a daily basis, to ensure the organisation recovers from this catastrophe by the end of this financial year.”
Motsoaledi said the entity had undertaken to submit the annual financial statements for the 2020/21 financial by May 31, 2022, and simultaneously present the annual financial statements for the 2021/22 financial years.
“The annual reports will be submitted as soon as the audit process is concluded but within the prescribed turn-around times by Parliament to ensure full compliance by GPW going forward,” he said.
Political Bureau