Pretoria – The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Lechesa Tsenoli, has expressed concern over the 2011/12 Audit Outcomes of Municipalities report - recently released by the Auditor-General Terence Nombembe.
Tsenoli, who meet with his MECs and various stakeholders on Friday for their first meeting, resolved to take stringent measures to implement its recommendations.
The minister and the MECs also resolved to fast track the appointment of 556 managers in municipalities and demanded progress on post audit action plans by municipalities.
“More attention is urgently required to systematically address concerns and recommendations of the Auditor General which will require consolidation by all spheres of government,” said Tsenoli.
The meeting also discussed the prevailing state of governance, service delivery, among others.
The report which was released this week by the office of the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) revealed a picture of stagnation, with only nine municipalities receiving unqualified audit outcomes with no findings.
Of the nine municipalities with clean audits, three had received clean audits for the first time. None of the country’s eight metros obtained a clean audit opinion. Clean audit opinions are achieved when financial statements are unqualified and there are no reported audit findings in respect of either reporting on predetermined objectives or compliance with laws and regulations.
Almost half of the auditees that obtained a clean audit opinion were municipal entities rather than municipalities. In the Free State, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, almost all the clean audits were achieved by municipal entities. Eight municipal entities had clean audits, including the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market and the Fezile Dabi District Trust in the Free State.
Only 115 municipalities were able to receive unqualified audit opinions in 2011/12 with Gauteng, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal surpassing their 2009 60% targets and achieving 75%, 83% and 74% respectively.
According to the AGSA’s report, progress towards clean audits has been slow, with the number of clean audits remaining at the same low level of 5% for the past three years.
The report covers four key areas, namely an overview of the audit outcomes; the root causes of audit outcomes; initiatives and impact of key role players on audit outcomes and the financial health of local government.
The Auditor General identified key risk areas in local government, and Human Resource Management remains a key challenge in the report saying relying on outside consultancy remains problematic. - SAnews.gov.za
