The Auditor General’s (AG) report reveals that only 17 of the country’s 278 audited municipalities received clean audits for the past financial year.
The Democratic Alliance in Ekurhuleni said it is concerned that although Ekurhuleni managed an unqualified audit, AG Terence Nombembe made findings of non-compliance with laws and regulations in the metro’s annual financial statements.
DA spokesperson on finance, Eddie Taylor, said the Ekurhuleni Metro had some way to go in order to reach the target it had set itself of achieving a clean audit by 2014.
“In his audit, the AG had made adverse comments on various aspects of the metro’s finances,” he said.
“The initial document submitted to the AG for audit had contained errors, which needed to be corrected before the AG would pass a comment on the financial statements.”
Taylor added that the AG was particularly concerned about the shortcomings in the municipality’s information technology department, where insufficient security and safety have been designed into the systems.
“The DA has repeatedly called for transparency in the awarding of tenders to be improved by simply opening the committee meetings where bids are awarded to scrutiny by the public and the media as is done in the Cape Town Metro,” he said.
“The governing party has flatly refused to do so in Ekurhuleni, despite the high levels of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
“Nombembe also commented adversely about the fact that senior Finance Department posts had been vacant for some time.”
The AG believed that the failure to keep top positions filled with competent, reliable personnel was a root cause of municipalities not progressing to clean audit status.
“Ekurhuleni has been without a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the best part of a year after the incumbent was suspended pending an enquiry into misconduct,” said Taylor.
“He resigned before the start of the disciplinary process and the AG commented negatively on this situation.”
The AG had blamed the slow progress towards improvement in financial management in the province on three main root causes:
n key positions being vacant or key officials lacking appropriate competencies;
n lack of consequences for poor performance and transgressions; and
n slow response by political leadership in addressing the root causes of poor audit outcomes.
“Ekurhuleni is guilty of all three root causes, so the political leadership needs to take heed of the AG’s analysis of the reasons for lack of progress and take bold corrective steps to fix the situation,” warned Taylor.
Unfortunately,said Taylor, the governing party places other priorities first, such as cadre deployment and protection of political friends, and is woefully guilty of procrastination, all of which will stand in the way of achieving a clean audit.
