Herman insists City’s administration should be investigated
JOBURG – The AG's report shows that the provinces with the highest proportion of municipalities with clean audit opinions are the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal .
The Democratic Alliance (DA) mayoral candidate, Herman Mashaba, said the City of Joburg’s administrations should be investigated following the Auditor General’s (AG) local government report.
According to Mashaba, the AG report shows that Parks Tau’s administration presided over R959 million in unauthorised expenditure last year.
“This follows the DA’s announcement that there was over R4 billion in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure under Tau’s administration in the 2014/15 financial year,” he said.
He further explained that when elected, he would ban office bearers and their families from doing business with the City. “I will forensically audit all current contracts and tenders; increase the budget for capital projects that deliver infrastructure and services, and I will increase repair, maintenance and refurbishment budgets by billions of rand to keep services running,” he said.
Mashaba was addressing residents of Jeppestown.
Auditor General, Kimi Makwetu, released a report on local government audit outcomes for the 2014/15 financial year on 1 June.
Makwetu revealed that municipalities have shown an encouraging improvement in their audit results over the past five years from 2010/11 to 2014/15 financial years.
He said the number of municipalities that received clean audits have increased from 13 to 54.
“We commend the mayors and other oversight structures for their focused attention and decisive leadership that have ensured that basic administrative and financial disciplines are restored and observed,” he said.
According to the AG, the expenditure budget for the municipal sphere in 2014/15 totalled R347 billion.
Municipalities with clean audit opinions represent R134 billion, about 39 per cent of this amount, while those with unqualified opinions had findings that represent R143 billion, about 41 per cent.
Municipalities with qualified audit opinions made up R49 billion (14 per cent) of the total budget, while those with adverse and disclaimed opinions represented R20 billion.
The AG’s report shows that the provinces with the highest proportion of municipalities with clean audit opinions in 2014/15 were the Western Cape (73 per cent), Gauteng (33 per cent) and KwaZulu-Natal (30per cent).
Details: DA Johannesburg, 076 568 9941; Auditor General, 012 422 9880.
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