Non-compliance of business unit audits continue to plague the KwaDukuza municipality (KDM), with calls rising for executive directors to face the consequences.
This emerged as part of an action plan presented to council on March 31.
The plan is a mid-year performance review compiled by the internal auditor, who monitors repeated issues raised by the Auditor General’s (AG) review of annual reports.
In terms of S131 (1) of the Municipal Finance Management Act, a municipality must address issues raised in the AG’s report.
A total of 35 concerns were raised across 9 categories, only 5 of which have been rectified in the 6 months since the report.
The remaining 30 are identified as ‘in progress’, which raised bipartisan concern from councillors.
“It is no use to us to see that these challenges are in progress, we need to see how these challenges are being managed,” said Independent Alliance councillor, Ebrahim Kolia.
Six specific issues were highlighted as being of high risk if immediate action was not taken, all of which are in progress except for the repeat problem of non-regulated bulk purchases which has seen no progress.
“No progress on bulk purchases is a major issue because this is something that continues to badly affect us,” said African National Congress ward 29 councillor, Sicelinjabulo Cele.
A review of each department was done as part of the action plan, with the electrical department and the Economic Development and Planning Department again being flagged.
Both had made 0% progress on the 11 and 6 problem areas raised respectively.
“These continuous nonactions of our departments are why we continue to receive unqualified audits instead of an elusive clean audit. We need to see strict implementation of consequence management as we have repeatedly stated,” said Kolia.
Perhaps more worrying than the lack of progress is the apparent disregard by executive directors to submit compliance reports on time.
This was raised by internal audit head Yogan Pillay when delivering the action plan.
Seen as high risk by the internal audit committee, information needed to complete their audit is often not submitted timeously, or at all, said Pillay.
“It is very concerning that non-submission of compliance checklists is raised at all, let alone as high risk. We would like to see a more comprehensive consequence management plan to deal with those who are not complying,” said Democratic Alliance caucus leader and ward 6 councillor, Tammy Colley.
Acting municipal manager, Nhlanhla Mdakane, said a plan had been put in place and outlined the process that consequence management would entail.
Also of concern was that the internal audit team continues to be hamstrung by a low staff complement, as well as having no support from the currently unelected Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) chairperson.
“The MPAC committee not sitting has caused internal audit problems. That and the capacity we have will determine the audit assignments that are done from time to time. We may have to push and pull assignments as needed when we cannot get to all in time,” said Pillay.
Putting an oversight committee in a position where they cannot fulfill their role remains a major concern in the daily functioning of KDM.
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