Johannesburg - Tenders should be scrapped and state capacity for service delivery increased, the SA Communist Party and Young Communist League said on Thursday.
“Tenders are corrupting our public service and our politics to the detriment of our society and the confidence it has in our government,” YCL national secretary Buti Manamela said in a statement.
The SACP called in statement for tenders to be scrapped and for services to be delivered through the state.
“This would mean that municipalities must create capacity to render services like garbage collection, infrastructure roll-out, road maintenance, building of houses and so forth,” the party said.
The two organisations' demands come after Auditor General Terence Nombembe released a report on local government's finances for 2010/2011.
The report revealed that only five percent of the country's municipalities received clean audits, while none of the metros received clean audits. Procurement to the value of R3.5 billion could not be audited because the required information was not available.
The SACP said it was perturbed by the report indicating councillors, mayors and municipal managers did not have a proper understanding of their responsibilities.
The party believed Nombembe's findings called for a thorough introspection of South Africa's system of governance, and the capacity of the state to deliver services.
The YCL said it had repeatedly called on the government to increase its internal capacity and use competence and merit to build that capacity.
The league felt harsh penalties should be imposed for corruption and fraud.
The SACP believed the current legislative and regulatory environment was anti-development and had fed into the “tender boom”.
“This boom has seen the rise in collusion between officials and companies doing business with the municipalities.”
The report showed six new municipalities had joined the clean audit category, taking the total to 13. These were in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and the Western Cape.
However none of the municipalities in the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, Northern Cape, and North West received clean audit reports.
Among the issues identified as a problem were procurement, service delivery, and errors in financial information.
None of the country's metros received clean audits, while 13 percent of municipalities did not submit financial statements in time for auditing.
There are currently 343 municipalities in the country. - Sapa