Lack of consequence management worries councillors
THE article on the front page on Tuesday, July 7, highlighted a key finding of the Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu, namely the problem of contract management within the City.
While he acknowledged that the metro had “devised an audit action plan”, he lamented that the implementation did not yield the desired impact.
The AG noted that contract management is especially of concern as the metro has been plagued with issues in this area for some years.
The metro’s systems are not adequately designed or configured to monitor expenditure on contracts.
This is not a concern with the AG. Many councillors concur with him.
In our last meeting of the council, Cope and a number of other political parties voted against numerous items of irregular expenditure that were condoned by the municipal public accounts committee (MPAC) on the basis that value was received.
The majority party approved the recommendations of MPAC while may of us voted against them.
The lack of consequence management is what perturbed me and other councillors.
Surely we should not be having such a long list of irregular expenditure to deal with? We were told more irregular expenditure was going to be placed before the council for condonation very soon.
The thing that should be most upsetting for all of us is the AG’s finding that issues surrounding contract management had hindered the metro’s ability to deliver housing projects, contributing to capital underspending of R1.3 billion.
That is indeed a very big issue. and one that I have hammered very hard during the adjustment budgets.
The list of items for deferral on the budget has been quite alarming. The lack of agility in spending the budget has disastrous economic and social consequences for all of us, regardless of where we live and what work we do.
When budgets are spent properly and expeditiously, the accelerator and multiplier effects kick in and economic growth is stimulated.
Deputy mayor Ian Neilson acknowledged in his response to the Argus that “project planning was not optimal” and that some delays in the completion of work were due to factors within the City’s control. Furthermore, contractual disputes also delayed service delivery. The question that arises is: where to from here?
In our June meeting of the spatial planning and environment portfolio committee, I raised a number of questions regarding project management after we had received a presentation on the topic.
The written responses to these questions were incorporated in the last set of minutes as Annexure A.
To one of the questions, the response received was: “Risk management has been identified as an area of improvement as part of the maturity improvement process. Risk Management within SAP PPM has received additional attention and focus, to support improved risk management.”
This didn’t say much except for an admission that risks have not been handled as well as they should have been.
I requested to know what exactly is being done right now to reduce risks in project management.
I believe all of us would like to know what recent initiative was launched to focus on enhancing risk management to reduce risks.
In the same annexure, it is stated that the “tender process takes an average of 12 months in the City”.
This is where supply chain management comes in.
Some executive directors have been complaining about running into a brick wall and not being able to get projects off the ground timeously and cost-effectively.
Deviations in contracts have also become problems leading to irregular expenditure. This is also something that needs to be probed deeply.
All in all, there is a problem that needs to be fixed but sadly remains unfixed.
The leadership of the City must place before us solutions that will make the City’s project management “optimal” in keeping with the City’s goal of being really well run.
FAROUK CASSIM | Cope