Limpopo municipality fails 18th audit in a row

A Limpopo district municipality has received a disclaimer audit opinion from the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) for the second consecutive financial year.

For the past 18 years since 2009, the Mopani District municipality in the Norman Mashanane region has received either a disclaimer or an adverse audit opinion from the AGSA.

From 2019 to 2022, the council received one qualified audit opinion and two disclaimers.

During a state of the province address last year, premier Stan Mathabatha declared Limpopo a disclaimer province – one where none of the province’s 27 municipality would receive a disclaimer audit opinion

Historic findings

Speaking to The Citizen yesterday, the municipality said it was obviously disappointed.

“We are dealing with historic findings around unauthorised, irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure, the bulk of which dates back as far as 2009,” it said soon after the release of audit outcomes.

Municipal spokesperson, Odas Ngobeni said the council was committed to investigating thoroughly and resolving every finding.

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“We are busy strengthening our internal control systems and also our record management systems, which has been a weakness directly contributing to the negative audit findings,” he said.

The council was working hard to ensure better spending and accountability in every transaction to ensure better performance in the future.

Municipalities must clean up

Speaking on behalf of the South African Local Government Association (Salga) – a state organ which governs local and district municipalities in association with the Limpopo provincial government – its provincial chair, John Mpe, said Salga was very disappointed with the dismal performance of Mopani.

“We did not expect the municipality to continue performing like this, especially knowing the department of cooperative governance, human settlements and traditional affairs has been working hand in glove with the municipality to up their game.”

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Mpe said something needed to be done urgently for the municipality to receive healthy financial records, which would speak to the services rendered.

“We will have to start by putting the right systems and processes in place; appoint the right people with the right skills and experience to guard the municipal purse; take action on those snoring on the job and apply consequence management, as advised by the AG.

“We will also have to make sure we upskill our people through proper training, and ensure accountability in every cent they spend.”

Mpe also advised municipalities which are still outsourcing services to ensure that there is skills transference from service providers to municipal officials. This, he said, would minimise the use of consultants, who were doing the job that could have been best done by officials.

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He praised the Waterberg and Capricorn district municipalities which performed extremely well in their audits, calling them “the cream of Limpopo”.

“The two municipalities received clean audit opinions in 2021-22 financial year.”