Johannesburg - The Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu has warned of continued poor financial performance in some municipalities, although progress has been made in others.
Makwetu, who was speaking to Independent Media in Cape Town this week, ahead of the release of his municipal audit report on June 3, gave an insight into the report on the financial performance of municipalities. He would not give the number of municipalities that had either improved or regressed.
Makwetu said he had raised the red flag in certain areas that still required improvement. While there was an improvement of 9 percent of clean audits last year, this was better than 5 percent of clean audits the previous financial year.
The auditor-general said municipalities still needed to tighten their control on their purse strings.
“If one looks at the situation in 2007-08, at the time Operation Clean Audit was conceived – which took issues of financial management to the centre stage – the journey of that financial age will reflect a turnaround but there are also setbacks,” he said. “The report suggests they (municipal councils) should not ignore significant strengths that have emerged.”
He said there were areas that had remained stuck, with no improvements in sight.
He said the report had given municipalities marching orders to “jack up” certain things.
“We want to emphasise a point to pay attention to oversight,” he said.
Makwetu added that this would be done by the municipal public accounts committees.
He warned that municipal public accounts committees must be given the necessary support to be able to conduct their oversight role on the finances of municipal councils.
“If there is instability at the level of governance, if a council is not setting objectives of the municipal public accounts, committee councils will not survive,” he said.
He also expressed concern over the fact that many municipalities had not addressed the issue of skills.
This has been a long-standing complaint of the auditor-general, Parliament and the government.
The Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Pravin Gordhan also raised this issue.
Makwetu said at the recent conference with auditors-general from other Africa countries that they had noted improvements in the finances of many countries.
The conference was attended by 26 English-speaking countries from across the continent.
He said this was an indication that African countries were making strides in keeping their books in order.
Makwetu also revealed they wanted to monitor government departments and entities’ finances every quarter, and not wait until the end of the financial year to conduct audits. This would prevent irregular expenditure.
This initiative was also contained in their strategic plan for 2015-18. “On a quarterly basis we would want to go to the chief financial officer and accounting officer (head of department or director-general) where we would request a copy of your trial balance. The idea is that you have a balance of records,” he said.
If they picked up irregular expenditure or monies that could not be accounted for, they would raise this with the relevant portfolio committee in Parliament.
“We won’t do this alone, we will do it with internal audits,” he said, adding they would prioritise national and provincial government because they had started their new five-year term last year.
Political Bureau