Durban - An association of municipal managers nationwide is proposing a range of interventions to ensure that municipalities do not continue to squander public funds as revealed in the recent Auditor-General (AG) annual report.
In a five-point proposal sent out just days after AG Kimi Makwetu said municipal irregular and wasteful expenditure has shot to a staggering R32-billion, Max Mbili, the President of the Institute for Local Government Management of South Africa (ILGM), said as local government practitioners they need to decisively grab the bull by its horn to arrest the decline.
Mbili who is also the municipal manager at Ray Nkonyeni on the KZN South Coast said they also discourage over-reliance on consultants as this might be construed as lack of capacity amongst local government practitioners whilst the same consultants and municipal officials come from the same academic background.
“To this end, we propose the following intervention measures: working together with political leadership, we need to ensure stability at senior management level through prioritization and filling of critical senior management positions.
"Our observation is that municipalities where municipal managers (MMs), chief financial officers (CFOs) in the main and other senior managers are employed on average for more than five years, are likely to achieve good audit outcomes. On the other hand, municipalities which continually change MMs and CFOs, as well as other senior managers, are likely to have poor audit outcomes,” he said.
Making another recommendation on behalf of the association, Mbili said there is a need to eradicate the practice of employing officials who do not have prerequisite skills and competencies in senior managerial and critical positions.
He then turned to political parties and said they must come on board by ensuring that there is no political interference in running of municipalities.
“Governing parties in municipalities must ensure that political interference is halted, as there could be no mayor or municipal manager or council who would voluntarily seek to employ officials that are not suitably qualified. This does not in any way suggest that all problems of the local government are attributed to political interference but it has its fair share to the known local government problems. We are mentioning mayors and municipal managers because their heads are the first ones to roll where there is poor performance. Municipalities are built or destroyed at the point of selection and recruitment.”
Other recommendations included a call for the employment of all managers directly reporting to the municipal managers on a permanent basis as they believe that this will immensely stabilise municipalities as senior management vacancies will be drastically reduced and business continuity will be guaranteed, regardless of periodic council transitions that emanate from municipal elections.
“What we are saying is that managers reporting directly to municipal managers should be made permanent as opposed to a five-year contract. Their permanent appointment will ensure continuity and there will be no vacancies in the municipality. Employing them every five years leads to vacancies in critical positions when municipalities do not appoint them as soon as a vacancy arises,” Mbili said.