Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke said on Friday that auditing remotely has now become part of their lives and it has required adjustment from their staff and those of their auditees.
“We continue to learn from our experience of the past year so that we get better on this. It is my belief that we will become more efficient in how we audit and become more flexible and responsive so that we can shape our work to complete audits as quickly as possible,” Maluleke said.
She made the statement when she briefed the standing committee on the auditor-general on the second special report on the financial management of government’s Covid-19 initiatives.
Maluleke said the stop-start when there was risk of infection at audit sites had slowed down the audit process somewhat.
“We have learnt and I do think this year we will do better.”
She remained hopeful that there would be no delays in their audit work this year despite the uncertainty over the pandemic.
“Our commitment remains to prioritise the well-being of our staff. We will find ways to be flexible in way we audit so that we can minimise disruption in accountability and oversight processes.”
Maluleke said they would continue to audit the Covid-19 funding and follow up on the progress made in addressing the audit observations and findings.
“We will do that as part of out normal annual audit. In the course of the normal annual audit we will also identify material irregularities from the process and commence with the required processes as defined in the Public Audit Act as amended.”
She said the third special report would have a local government focus and was planned for tabling mid-2021.
“We use the time on sites auditing municipalities to look at further transactions, procurement processes and utilisation of grants by selected municipalities,” Maluleke said, adding that not all municipalities are audited for the upcoming special report as they were selected according to risk-based process.