Limpopo bigwigs get audit training

VBS FALLOUT: TO AVOID RECURRENCE OF WRONGDOING

MEC thinks it will ensure municipalities understand what is expected of them.

Limpopo mayors, managers, speakers, chiefwhips and chief financial officers spent most of yesterday undergoing training courses to prevent a reoccurrence of the VBS Mutual Bank saga.

It is two years since nine municipalities in Limpopo lost more than R1.2 billion in illicit investments in the bank.

It was also billed to improve the province’s municipal audit outcomes after none of the province’s 27 municipalities produced a clean audit from the auditorgeneral in the last financial year.

The two-day curriculum was provided by the Limpopo department of cooperative governance and the SA Local Government Association under the tutelage of executive committee member Basikopo Makamu.

In 2018, the Limpopo provincial government was forced to fire seven mayors for wrongly investing public funds into the bank.

The investments did not follow the prescripts of the Municipal Finance Management Act, which did not allow municipalities investing with mutual banks.

They were also made, despite a ban by the National Treasury.

“It is with this backdrop that we see it fit to train our new crop of mayors, their political and administrative teams in an endeavour to avoid the recurrence of the painful past,” said Makamu.

The two-day training course would also be used to pave a way forward for Limpopo’s aggressive plan of improving the municipal audits.

“We have compiled this training with the same thought and aim, that our councillors and officials understand with precision and distinction what is expected of them while serving in municipalities,” he told attendees at Bolivia Lodge, outside Polokwane.

“We also provided this training in an effort to ensure that our councillors understand perfectly what they are likely to face if and when they find themselves at the wrong side of the law,” Makamu subsequently told The Citizen.

Meanwhile the high court application by the Ma-Africa Party to have the municipalities that invested in VBS Mutual Bank dissolved was yesterday dismissed with costs after the applicants failed to appear in court.