Pretoria – The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) on Thursday unveiled a support programme to assist municipalities improve their audit outcomes.
According to a statement, SALGA’s overall objective for the Municipal Audit Support Programme (MASP) is to support municipalities who have qualified audit outcomes in order to gradually improve and sustain these improvements.
Auditor General, Kimi Makwetu, released the audit results of the country’s municipalities for the financial year 2012/13 on Wednesday.
The report, which is based on the Municipal Financial Management Act, showed a slight improvement in the audit outcomes over the last five years. There were 63 improvements in different categories of audit outcomes and the regressions are starting to shrink with 25 categories.
SALGA said the focus of MASP will first be on municipalities with adverse or disclaimer opinions, as well as those municipalities whose audits were not finalised by the legislated deadline based on the 2012/2013 AGSA audit outcomes. There are 79.
“From the 79 municipalities, a number of municipalities will be selected for hands-on support by SALGA and for the remaining municipalities, SALGA will monitor municipalities and engage with district municipalities, treasuries and CoGTA’s to ensure that relevant and practical support is provided to these municipalities.
“For the municipalities selected, we have identified which of the six key risk areas below as per the AG’s report are applicable to each respective municipality and will base the customised support in response to the risk areas identified.,” said SALGA.
The body said it would prepare a customised support plan per municipality which will consider the support that the municipality currently receives from treasuries and CoGTA’s and other stakeholders.
In addition, SALGA has identified certain support initiatives that are transversal to all 278 municipalities such as records management training and the development of a consultant management framework.
The support and coordination role of district municipalities is also vital to local municipalities within their district. SALGA said it encouraged the establishment and rollout of shared audit committees and shared internal audit functions under the control and direction of the district municipality.
There are four pillars under the MASP, including:
- the institutional capacity pillar which focuses on vacancies, competencies and performance management systems;
- the financial management pillar which focuses on supply chain management as well as expenditure/asset/receivables management and financial, compliance and performance reports;
- the leadership pillar which covers both political and administration, executive coaching, councillor induction and on-going training, senior management induction programme, embedding and reinforcing councillor handbook, ongoing technical support and consequence management framework linked to appropriate regulations;
- the governance pillar addresses internal audit, oversight and ICT.
“Sustainable improvement in audit outcomes are expected to occur gradually as the four pillars are strengthened and developed by committed partners. SALGA envisages that MASP will improve accountability, governance and service delivery,” said SALGA.
SALGA Deputy Chairperson, Mpho Nawa, said the MASP was not just a response to the AG’s report, though partly informed by it, but a well-considered broad approach to support and assist municipalities generally and those with negative audit outcomes in particular. – SAnews.gov.za
