Warning for municipalities who do not perform

Premier Stan Mathabatha issued a strong warning to mayors, municipal managers and chief financial officers (CFOs) who through under average performance negatively affect audit opinions at the end of the financial year. Mathabatha was addressed office-bearers during a Special Premier’s Inter-Governmental Forum at a venue in Polokwane area last Wednesday. He said harsh action will be taken against anyone who does not perform to the best of their ability. He stressed that this was the only way officials can learn to pay attention to their work and ensure that municipalities are functional and render adequate services to the people, he said and added that he mandated all the municipalities to acquire unqualified audit opinions to stay out of trouble.
“Regression is punishable in this government and we are going to deal harshly with the leadership of any municipality that regressed. We don’t have a metropolitan municipality in the province but you find small municipalities with a disclaimer and this is unacceptable. Findings highlighted by the Auditor General are important because a responsible leader will correct and clear the findings for the financial statements to be correct.”
He emphasised that it does not make sense that mayors in the province should be performing worse than large metropolitan municipalities which administers huge budgets, thousands of employees and a large quantum of assets. He added that municipalities were requested to fill critical posts but highlighted that there were still those lagging behind and mayors must account. According to the report presented at the Provincial Budget Lekgotla recently, only 15 out of 27 municipal manager posts in the province were filled, 14 CFO posts, 13 corporate services manager and 17 technical services manager positions.
Mathabatha cautioned mayors that there would be consequences if the aforementioned positions were not filled and stressed that municipalities have had sufficient time since the last elections to ensure that these positions are filled. He explained that he had convened the meeting for mayors to reveal their challenges and reiterated that it was unacceptable for leaders to make similar excuses every year.
“In July I summoned a sitting of this nature to mainly look into the state of readiness for the coming circle of municipal audits. The idea was to prepare municipalities to avoid the recurrence of problems which we had identified in the previous audit years. These problems included the failure to submit financial statements or the presentation of poor quality of financials to the Auditor General,” Mathabatha said and added that dysfunctionality in most municipalities was the result of poor governance, political instability; poor audit outcomes, high vacancy rate at senior management level and poor spending of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant.

Story & photo: ENDY SENYATSI
>>endy@observer.co.za