Johannesburg - Fruitless expenditure, a growing debtors book, weak internal controls, capacity issues and annual targets not being met, are hampering the City of Johannesburg’s attempts to get a clean audit.
But, that will come to an end if the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) has its way.
In an unprecedented move, the committee has invited the media to attend its future meetings, saying it wants public representatives to be held accountable.
In a frank admission during the monthly council meeting last week, MPAC chairman Sol Cowan said it was all about the city’s executive committee being held accountable.
The MPAC is the municipal equivalent of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), which has an oversight role and assists in holding officials to account.
In terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act, the council is vested with the responsibility to oversee the performance of the municipality.
It is especially tasked to exercise oversight of the auditor-general’s annual report.
Cowan said although the city had made great strides by achieving an unqualified audit, there was still much work to be done. In future, he said, the committee was going to highlight the positives as well as the negatives.
On the positive side of the auditor-general’s report, there is an improved cash position from R695 million in 2012 to R5.3 billion last year.
There was also an improved liquidity ratio from just under 1 in 2012 to 1.09 last year.
Notwithstanding this, he said, the city had not achieved a clean audit.
Speaking on the auditor-general’s findings, Cowan said the committee was examining every aspect of it to see what they could do to get a clean audit.
“Of major concern is that core departments and entities still incur thousands of rands’ worth of fruitless and wasteful expenditure due to payment of interest on late payments made to service providers like Eskom and Telkom and the fact that there is real lack of consequence for officials who are responsible. Letters of warning seem to be the harshest consequence,” he said.
The debtors book is growing and it’s worrying, although this could be attributed to the weakening economy.
Poor internal controls are another worry.
“This is a great concern, not only to the MPAC committee, but to other oversight committees. The city does not have, among others, an effective record-keeping system, effective contract-management systems, including chain management processes, that are not adhered to at all times,” Cowan said.
Capacity issues, a high number of vacancies in core departments and an incomplete skills audit are other concerns.
Although the city has improved the attainment of annual targets from 56 percent in 2013 to 61 percent last year, the committee would like to see radical improvements on this.
MPAC has made a recommendation that the accounting office present progress reports, including:
* On city action plans to address the findings of the auditor-general by June.
* By the managing directors of City Power and Joburg Water on progress in curbing unaccounted-for water and electricity on a quarterly basis, starting in June.
* Quarterly reports on unauthorised; irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure and deviation from supply-chain management processes.
* A skills audit progress report which should be tabled by June.
The Star