Limpopo officials learning how not to repeat VBS scandal

Limpopo mayors, municipal managers, speakers, chief-whips and chief-finance officers spent the better part of today undergoing training meant to prevent the re-occurrence of the VBS saga, two years after nine municipalities in the province lost over R1 .2bn due to illicit investments in the liquidated VBS Mutual Bank.

The province’s municipal audit outcomes also contributed to the need for the training, after none of the 27 municipalities failed to obtain a clean audit opinion from the Auditor General during the last financial year.

The training, which is set to continue until tomorrow, is provided by the Limpopo department of cooperative governance and the South African Local Government Association (Salga) under the tutelage of MEC Basikopo Makamu.

In 2018, the Limpopo provincial government found itself between a rock and a hard-place when it was forced to fire seven mayors for wrongly investing public finds in the bank. The investment was done despite an express ban by national treasury, and without following the prescripts of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), which forbade municipalities from investing with mutual banks.

“It is with this backdrop that we see it fit to train our new crop of mayors, their political and administrative teams in an endeavor to avoid the re-occurrence of the painful past,” said Makamu yesterday. Makamu said the two-day training course would also be used to pave a way forward for Limpopo’s aggressive plan of improving municipal audits.

Addressing municipalities at Bolivia Lodge outside Polokwane, Makamu said the first day of the training session would target speakers and chairpersons of Municipal Public Accounts Committees (MPACs) to build and strengthen public accounting in municipalities. He said the programme was also poised to strengthen how municipalities conduct their business and build capacity for the proper functioning of council committees.

“On Wednesday we will provide in-house training to members of the political management teams (PMTs) and the Executive Committees (EXCOs) from ten municipalities that invested with the VBS. The training will be extended to municipalities that were identified as distressed. The training program will deliver content in policy and legislation, roles and responsibilities of a counselor, municipal procedures.

“The training will also be on protocol, municipal planning, municipal finance management, municipal performance and accountability, municipal councilor as an ethical leader and municipal infrastructure delivery processes,” explained Makamu.

In November 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law new powers that give the Auditor General, Kimi Makwetu teeth to act on dirt uncovered in government and state-owned enterprises.

he law came into effect on 1 April 2019 and gives Makwetu the powers to refer suspected material of irregularities to a relevant public body for investigations, issue a certificate of debt where an accounting officer failed to recover losses from a responsible person, and instruct the relevant executive authority to collect the debt, provide for the establishment of powers and functions of a remuneration committee, to mention but just a few.

“We have compiled this training with the same thought and aim that our councilors and officials understands with precision and distinction what is expected of them while serving in municipalities. We also provided this training in an effort to ensure that our councilors understand perfectly what they are likely to face if and when they find themselves at the wrong side of the law,” Makamu told The Citizen.

Meanwhile the High court application by the Ma-Africa Party to have the municipalities that invested in VBS dissolved was yesterday dismissed with costs after the applicants failed to appear in court.

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