23 December 2005
	"Merseta has an impeccable financial record and has more than sufficient funds for the next four years to cover all commitments" SETA SPENDING WITHIN LIMITS Bettie van Straaten, CEO Merseta.

It is with the utmost dismay that Merseta read your article about sector education & training authorities' (Setas) overspending (Business December 16). The writer failed to solicit comment from Merseta (the manufacturing- and engineering-related service Seta) before publishing the article and, as a result, the FM published hugely inaccurate and unconfirmed information about Merseta. The report that Merseta "ended the past financial year with a large liability, having overspent by R30m on National Skills Fund (NSF) projects" is wrong and misleading. If the writer had done her research properly, she would have at the very least contacted the NSF or auditor-general, neither of which, according to our information, was done. The author contacted our office for comment on Thursday December 8 and, due to commitments on our part, was promised an interview on Tuesday December 13, or a written response to her questions on December 12, which she declined. Had she accepted our accommodating her, she would have had an accurate response to her questions. But she decided "to file without our input" - something we feel lowers the credibility of your publication, especially on an issue of national interest. We would like to state for the record that Merseta has an impeccable financial administration and budgeting record and, what is more, has more than sufficient funds for the next four years to cover all commitments made and still to be made. The issue in contention about overspending results from a section of our 2004/2005 annual report where it is stated that we received conditional funding of about R9m from the NSF, and during the year incurred about R34m project special expenses. The report further states that attempts are being made to recover about R30m and, for the sake of prudence, a debtor has not been raised. What this actually means is that for our learnerships and courseware development project, the NSF gave Merseta an upfront payment of R9,4m. During the progress of the project we incurred expenses that are covered by the scope of funding for the project so Merseta committed to using its own funds while waiting for NSF funding. So the overexpenditure in question is expenditure that is within the limits of the project and the amount in question is claimable from the NSF.