New systems to aid creation of ‘Gauteng of our dreams’
● The Gauteng government will this year roll out open tender and integrity management systems in all municipalities to curb corruption. The systems will also assist municipalities that have for years been receiving poor audit outcomes from the office of the auditor-general.
“We will roll out the open tender and integrity management systems in all municipalities in order to improve the ethical environment. Most municipalities have been receiving poor audit outcomes from the auditor-general and there is no implementation of the remedial action,” said Gauteng premier David Makhura.
“We have constantly asserted that a capable, ethical and developmental state is an indispensable weapon in our struggle to create the Gauteng of our dreams.”
Makhura said the government remained committed to integrity and ethics in the Gauteng city region. “The procurement irregularities and corruption allegations during the pandemic have forced us to go back and review the efficacy of all the anti-corruption measures. We will strengthen our prevention, detection, investigation and resolution procedures and push ahead with the institutionalisation of clean governance.
“The implementation of the open tender system, the introduction of integrity management measures, the significant advances on clean audits and the four-year-old partnership with the Special Investigating Unit stand as testimony to our commitment to fighting corruption as well as promoting clean governance,” he said.
“We are going to shine a spotlight on every department and agency that is not taking clean governance seriously. We will tighten prevention, detection, investigation and resolution systems and crack the whip on departments and agencies that are bringing the name of our province into disrepute by defrauding the public purse.”
“During the fifth administration, we improved clean audit outcomes from 54% to 65% and the balance of the departments and entities obtained unqualified audit reports. We eliminated disclaimers and adverse findings completely from the audit outcomes of the province because we cracked the whip. We will hold accounting officers answerable where there are poor audit outcomes.”
But Makhura bemoaned that there was some regression in the 2019/2020 financial year across all departments and entities.
“We are not going to retreat from our goal of seeking to achieve 100% clean audit outcomes,” he said.
“We are equally conscious of the fact that in the eyes of the people, clean governance means an ethical state geared to meet the social needs as well as the economic and political empowerment of citizens to shape their own destinies.
He was, however, greatly concerned that the financial position of many municipalities had deteriorated during the pandemic due to the loss of more than R8.75bn in revenue between April and July 2020. The loss had negative implications for service delivery and affected the resilience of municipalities.
“We are working with all our municipalities in the province to improve their financial viability, which was impacted by the national lockdown. We have a multidisciplinary team of revenue experts as part of the debtmanagement committee to help struggling municipalities to develop an integrated revenue enhancement and debtors management plan and to ensure accurate billing.”