Limpopo premier Phophi Ramathuba. Picture: Limpopo Legislature/Facebook
Limpopo premier Dr Phophi Ramathuba has had enough of the huge expenditure by government departments in the province on consultants – and has given struggling municipalities until the next financial year to put their houses in order or face the consequences of turning a deaf ear to her advisors and the auditor-general (AG).
“We will not rush to take punitive measures against them, but we will work hand in glove with the department of cooperative governance, human settlements and traditional affairs to assist them to get out of the woods,” she said.
Her comments came a week after the AG’s office revealed that Limpopo had the highest spending of any of the country’s nine provinces on consultants – a staggering R280 million annually.
Despite many of the consultants being employed to prepare financial statements for audits by the AG, many towns and municipalities failed to get unqualified audits.
Ramathuba said the biggest problem with consultants was that in most cases, they didn’t impart skills to officials to improve spending and accountability.
She said this often led to councils failing to improve in their annual audit outcomes.
She said, as part of a strategy to deal with the issue, the provincial government had decided to embark on an aggressive plan dubbed “home coming” to attract skilled and schooled personnel in accounting to help struggling municipalities prepare their annual financial reports.
“After being trained in this province, most professionals left to further their training. When they graduated, they still lived in those provinces, looking for economic opportunities to better their lives.
“They got employed there and lived there with their spouses and children. But now we want them back home,” she said.
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Last week, Limpopo ANC provincial chair Stan Mathabatha told mayors, managers, speakers, chief whips and ward councillors to minimise, or stop the use of consultants in favour of in-house service.
“While we have improved in our audit outcomes, dependency on consultants is too much and it must be reduced or stopped.
“We must strengthen our measures to build an all-round internal capacity in an endeavour to lower the use of consultants and save the public purse,” he said.
The EFF’s provincial chair, Lawrence Mapoulo, said consultants were expensive and sometimes useless.
He said one of the many problems with consultants was that councils hired them to perform duties of in-house officials, who are paid a monthly salary.
“That is wasteful expenditure and it must accounted for,” he said.
Mapoulo, who is a former municipal mayor himself, said cadre deployment was another problem facing Limpopo municipalities.
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