Clean audit for Ilembe
Mayor warns that only outstanding performances would be awarded with a bonus.
Performance bonuses would only be paid for outstanding performance, not for doing as expected, Ilembe district municipality Mayor Welcome Mdabe, has warned officials.
Welcoming the clean audit for the 2013/14 financial year, Mdabe nevertheless said there was still room for improvement.
Mdabe told the Ilembe council on January 28: “Where there is poor performance reasons are determined and corrective measures are put in place to correct the situation. Performance bonuses are only paid for outstanding performance, not for doing as expected.”
The municipality had water losses totaling R34,88 million due to “illegal connections, ageing infrastructure, reservoir overflows and service leaks”.
R21, 82 million were spent on inactive accounts that are accumulating interest with no corresponding payments and pensioner accounts and deceased consumer accounts that are accumulating interest.
The municipality underspent the budget on capital expenditure to the amount of R23,07 million, resulting in the municipality not achieving their service delivery target for the year.
However, the municipality was rated by South African president Jacob Zuma in his June State of the Nation address as one of the 11 district municipalities in the country and one of the three in the province with consistent good performance.
There are still ongoing investigations by the Provincial Internal Audit Services into two allegations of fraud and corruption.
One investigation began in July 2011 into allegations of fraudulent issuing of clearance certificates and another of allegations of fraud and corruption against senior officials in July 2012, which is also still in progress.
