Poor state of affairs

LIMPOPO: 27 MUNICIPALITIES BUT ONLY CAPRICORN GETS CLEAN AUDIT

Province’s councils accumulatively owe Eskom and the water boards R3 billion.

The SA Local Government Association (Salga) in Limpopo says the regression in municipal audit outcomes highlighted the need for intensified actions on enforcing accountability and consequence management. Limpopo has 22 local and five district municipalities.

Of the 27, only the Capricorn district municipality received a clean audit outcome. Only Mopani, Vhembe and Mogalakwena and a few others have improved their audit outcomes.

While only a fraction of Limpopo populace commended the few municipalities that performed well in the books of the Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu, the majority of the people said the outcome was better compared with 2017-2018, where none of the province’s municipalities got a clean audit.

During a presentation by Makwetu to the Limpopo standing committee on public accounts a fortnight ago, he said only 8% of the province’s municipalities were in financial good health and 79% were of concern, while 13% required urgent financial intervention.

Makwetu said Limpopo municipalities accumulatively owed Eskom and the water boards R3 billion. Mopani and Vhembe district municipalities were the biggest culprits, owing the water boards R930 000 and R830 000 respectively.

Makwetu indicated that the province’s municipalities have spent R122 million on consultants to improve their audit outcomes and that there was still no consequence meted out for poor performance.

In its response to Makwetu’s report, Salga Limpopo said it was regrettable that only 20 out of 257 municipalities in the country achieved clean audit outcomes for the period 2018/2019 financial year.

“While we note the pockets of excellence in some of our councils, we are also deeply concerned about the continued regression in overall audit outcomes by the sector,” said Salga Limpopo provincial chairperson Pule Shayi.

“The dismal performance by the province’s municipalities is a huge setback towards the vision by the government to achieve a developmental local government built on the pillars of clean governance and financial accountability.”

Shayi, who is also executive mayor for the Mopani district municipality and ANC Mopani regional chair, said in light of the bad performance, the association had resolved to communicate directly with mayors and accounting officers of municipalities who have transgressed.

He said this was in terms of relevant legislation to demand accountability, call on municipalities to develop audit response plans that were to be monitored on a quarterly basis and conduct skills assessments in municipal finance units.

“We are also concerned about the growing signs of a diminishing ability to pay for services, or completely refusing to pay for services rendered by the government to communities,” he said.

“It is this culture of nonpayment for municipal services that has resulted in consumer debtors of over R181 billion. This affects the ability of municipalities to pay creditors on time.”

Shayi said Salga called upon law enforcement agencies to act expeditiously on the outcomes of their investigations as they relate to maladministration in local government.