The Ethics Institute (TEI) – a Gauteng Municipal Integrity Initiative Project – has given the Ekurhuleni metro thumbs up after it assessed the City’s ethics and anti-corruption management maturity.
According to metro spokesperson, Themba Gadebe, Ekurhuleni received a score of 84.0 following an assessment of the maturity of ethics and anti-corruption capacity in Gauteng municipalities.
The assessment is informed by 2015 Local Government Anti-Corruption Strategy – Integrity Management Framework.
Commissioned to analyse and identify ethics risk, the assessment served as a basic gap analysis for municipalities to assess their anti-corruption capacity between May and June 2017.
The ethics and anti-corruption maturing assessment focuses on various indicators obtained through electronic and paper-based survey format.
“These indicators include the state of leadership in terms of Council commitments, community ownership focusing on availability of avenues to the public to report allegations non-ethical and corrupt practices and mechanisms for prevention and resolution,” said Gadebe.
In terms of governance, the indicators examines the existence of audit committees, Municipal Public Accounts Committees, Council Disciplinary Committee or/and Council Ethics Committee.
The assessment further include prevention of unethical and corrupt practices through promotion of professional ethical culture, municipal values statement, code of conduct adopted by the city, anti-fraud and corruption policies and procedures, among others.
The Ethics Institute put under microscope the municipal ability to detect unethical behaviour using internal audit, analysis of information, whistle-blowing mechanism and data management.
Other important key indicators during the assessment-involved the Integrity Management Framework, policies relating to investigations, resolution, monitoring and reporting, risk management processes and awareness campaigns.
“While the City of Ekurhuleni has proven to be in good compliance, there is an acknowledgment that more can still be done to achieve a full compliance status” said Gadebe.
Gadebe said, in this regard, the metro’s intervention to acquire a full compliance status includes:
- Rigorous Consequence management
- Enhanced communication strategies
- Enhancing processes for addressing community concerns
- Sustained training and awareness campaigns
- Measurement of ethics through performance management
- Independent Commissioner of Integrity that will enforce the COE Integrity Framework
- Screening and vetting of suppliers and other high risk stakeholders
