Fiscal good news as two municipalities improve

TWO Eastern Cape municipalities have earned a clean audit for the first time.

This means they produced statements for the auditor-general (AG) that in all respects accurately reflected the financial state of the municipality with no queries. The good news continues. Cacadu District Municipality and Senqu Municipality led an allround improvement in the accounting performance of provincial municipalities and their entities in the 2013-14 fiscal year, which ended in June.

Senqu has had a stormy recent history, being the centre of major community unrest for months, which led to municipal and government services coming to a standstill in Sterkspruit.

The unrest in the town focused on demands for it to have its own standalone municipality.

Residents wanted to break away from Senqu, which encompasses Lady Grey, Barkly East, Sterkspruit, Rhodes, Rossouw and Herschel.

Senqu mayor Nozibele Mtyali attributed the audit outcome to political and administrative stability in the municipality.

“Every person in the institution has been striving for this clean au-

‘ Every person within the institution has been striving for this clean audit for almost five years now

dit for almost five years now,” Mtyali said.

The municipality has been receiving unqualified audit opinions for the past five years, which means there were some minor queries.

Eastern Cape Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) spokesman Mamnkeli Ngam said the audit outcomes were still to be presented to municipal councils for adoption.

“Municipalities with public entities are still consolidating their reports. Cogta EC is therefore unable to comment at this stage.”

This comes shortly after Cogta Minister Pravin Gordhan instructed his provincial counterpart, MEC Fikile Xasa, to ensure that all chief financial officers and municipal managers in local government had adequate qualifications.

Gordhan said 170 financial officers in 278 municipalities were unqualified for their jobs.

Not one of the municipalities in the province received a clean audit, but the number of institutions that received unqualified audits increased from nine to 12.

Auditor-general Kimi Makwetu revealed a month ago that most Eastern Cape municipalities were run by accounting officers who did not meet the state’s minimum requirements.