Durban - The eThekwini Municipality is co-operating with the Auditor General in completing the audit before the AG’s team pulled out this week citing they had received death threats.
Today there were media reports that eThekwini had received a letter from the AG’s KZN office saying they were pulling out due to safety concerns following death threats on a staff member. The Mercury reported that the threat came after the team requested some supply chain management documents for the audit.
On Friday the city held a press briefing at the Durban City Hall. City manager Sipho Nzuza said the AG’s team hadn’t been working on an investigation when a single death threat was received. It had been working on a “procedural interim audit”.
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“We are going to make sure that they (AG) continue with their work. What is important to us is that we make safety and security available to them, to make sure that their and our staff are protected, and also to make sure that the documentation they are working on is also protected,” said Nzuza.
Nzuza said yesterday he held a meeting at the AG’s office where concerns were raised about the threat received from an individual who showed a detailed knowledge of the pattern of movements of a senior auditor who is handling the audit.
“I must say this not a special investigation but a procedural interim audit which is to test the systems within the organisation and it forms part of their (AG) final audit for the year. So I think the person (who received the threat) was dealing with the supply chain management audit to test the controls in that area and also some of the issues surrounding the cases dealt with by the City Integrity Unit,” Nzuza said.
He said that at the meeting at the AG’s office they learnt that the person who made the threatening phone call seemed to be unhappy with this particular audit and the work being done on it.
“We also discussed at the meeting that the work of the auditors should carry on, we are not going to be threatened by anyone - we are going to provide security. This is not going to stop, we will carry on with this particular audit,” he said.