Pretoria - Correctional Services has undertaken to heighten interventions aimed at ensuring that the department receives a clean audit report by the 2011/12 financial year.
The strategy includes building capacity at every level of management by recruiting 496 interns that will focus on strengthening asset management and in particular, verification of assets across management areas, regions and head office.
There are also plans to advertise over 300 positions soon to address the over 80 percent vacancy rate in the financial branch of the department.
This was revealed by National Commissioner Tom Moyane during the presentation of the Annual Report to the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services in Parliament on Thursday.
He said the department is rolling out a four-pronged turnaround strategy to address the qualification of Correctional Services' audits on asset management within the next two years.
The department's 2009/10 financial statements received one qualification on movable, tangible assets, as the Auditor General could not verify and track all assets back to the register. These amounted to approximately R31 million, while other assets were overvalued by R57million.
Moyane said the leadership of the department has "taken a decision to leave nothing to chance" by devolving the department's capacity to provide internal audit, internal controls and asset management in all six regions.
The department also gave highlights of its achievements to build on during the financial year. These include the department's anti-corruption capacity, which was rated as the third best in an audit conducted by the Department of Public Service that covered 85 government institutions nationally, among others.
Responding to a series of questions by members of the committee, Moyane said the financial management of the department was adversely affected by the implementation of various Occupation Specific Dispensations that had not been budgeted for during the 2008/09 financial year, which resulted in an over expenditure of R483 million.
Moyane said the department instituted serious austerity measures in 2009/10, which helped the department to spend 99 percent of its allocated R13.6 billion budget. This is within the required standards prescribed by the National Treasury.
