’Marafaele Mohloboli

A performance audit carried out by Auditor-General (AG) Lucy Liphafa for the 2013/14 financial year revealed that government is fighting a losing battle against maladministration and corruption in the old-age pension scheme.

According to the audit, undeserving beneficiaries are fraudulently accessing funds meant for the elderly, which Ms Liphafa says could have been averted with better  management.

“It was discovered that there were cases of fraudulent registrations by using a tampered passport and multiple passports. In Maseru, an applicant used a forged baptismal certificate to match a tampered passport, whilst an Elector Details Report showed a different date of birth from altered documents, hence these ineligible applicants were registered and paid,” reads Ms Liphafa’s report presented to parliament on Wednesday.

The report further states although the Department of Civil Registry promised to transfer all data collected to the Pensions Office, this was not the case, creating  loopholes which the fraudsters have since been exploiting.

“In a case where funds are paid to proxies, a local chief endorses the letter, which authenticates a proxy and affirms that a pensioner is alive. However, chiefs continued to authenticate proxies to claim for deceased pensioners as if they were still alive, thus assisting proxies to fraudulently claim for non-existent pensioners. As a result government continued to lose money,” says Ms Liphafa in her report.

The AG says such cases happened at the Semonkong pay-point in July 2012, resulting in government losing M90 300 through the payment of ghost pensioners.

“This also happened in Butha-Buthe and Thaba-Tseka, where money totaling M28 750 was paid to unlawful claimants through the names of deceased pensioners,” the report also reveals.

This “carelessness”, the AG points out, is suspected to be deliberate and meant to defraud the government. Ms Liphafa says other factors fuelling these corrupt activities are lack of supervision and monitoring at pay-points, delays in updating lists, inadequate cashboxes, late submission of returns for reconciliation and lack of communication with stakeholders.

In a bid to raise awareness on such issues, Ms Liphafa recommends frequent meetings to bridge the information gap.

The old-age pension scheme was introduced by government in November 2004, through which the elderly are paid a monthly grant.