Municipalities not improving — auditor-general
• Latest findings by auditor-general show overall deterioration in finances and further plundering by officials
Only 13% of SA’s municipalities have received a clean audit. Auditor-general Kimi Makwetu has published the latest local government audit findings, which show an overall deterioration in municipal finances between 2015-16 and 2016-17. Only 33 of the country’s 257 municipalities received a clean audit in 2016-17, compared with 48 the year before. Audit outcomes of 45 municipalities deteriorated and a mere 16 municipalities improved. /
Only 13% of SA’s municipalities have received a clean audit.
On Wednesday, Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu published the latest local government audit findings, which show an overall deterioration in municipal finances between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
Only 33 of the country’s 257 municipalities received a clean audit in 2016-17, compared with 48 the year before.
Audit outcomes of 45 municipalities deteriorated and amere 16 municipalities improved.
The audit outcomes reflected the first year of newly elected councils after the reduction of municipalities from 278 to 257 and the local government elections held in August 2016.
The report showed a surge in irregular expenditure, which rose 75% to R28.4bn in 2016-17, up from R16.2bn the year before. Makwetu said R15bn of the total reported for 2016-17 related to irregular expenditure in prior years that had gone undetected until now.
Repeated advice and warnings to officials charged with the oversight of municipal spending over the past five years had fallen on deaf ears, said Makwetu.
“We are still faced with the same accountability and governance challenges we had flagged throughout these years. There has been no significant positive change towards credi- ble results. Instead, we are witnessing a reversal in audit outcomes,” he said.
Not only were municipalities failing to take action on the auditor-general’s findings, but the environment in which auditing teams had to work had become steadily more hostile with increased threats to staff, said Makwetu.
Against this backdrop, Parliament is finalising the Public Audit Amendment Bill, which contains provisions that give greater power to the auditorgeneral’s office, including the ability to refer institutions and individuals to state organs with investigative powers, such as the Hawks and the South African Police Service.
The bill will also give the auditor-general’s office the ability to order accounting officers to pay back money that has been lost as a result of their mismanagement.
Vincent Smith, chairman of Parliament’s standing committee on the auditor-general, said the committee had finished its deliberations on the bill and approved the proposed amendments.
Its report on the bill would be tabled in the National Assembly later this week. “We hope it will be debated before we rise,” he said, referring to the fact that the National Assembly’s term ends on June 15.
Makwetu said vacancies and instability in key positions, inadequate skills and political infighting were some of the factors that contributed to the poor audit outcomes.
Not a single municipality in North West, Limpopo or the Free State received a clean audit.
Even the Western Cape, which still has the largest number of municipalities with a clean audit (21), saw a slide in its performance, with six municipalities receiving a worse audit outcome in 2016-17 than the year before.
The City of Cape Town, Bitou and Eden all lost their clean audit status. Gauteng retained its status, with only one municipality, Midvaal, receiving a clean audit.
Andries Nel, the deputy minister of co-operative governance, said the auditor-general’s report corroborated his department’s own assessment of municipalities: “A third are functioning well, a third are getting the basics right but need support and a third are, quite frankly, dysfunctional,” he said.
The DA’s Kevin Mileham said the Department of Co-operative Governance needed to be firm with errant municipalities.
“It is simply not good enough to have these damning reviews years after our municipalities have been plunged into a state of crisis,” he said.