RUSTENBURG - The South African Municipal Workers Union had not expected a better audit report on municipalities than the one released on Wednesday, it said.
In auditor general (AG) Kimi Makwetu's report for the 2018/2019 year, he found that irregular expenditure incurred by the country's municipalities had increased by R7 billion, to R32 billion.
"We were not expecting municipalities to perform any better compared to the previous years," said SAMWU general secretary, Koena Ramotlou via a statement.
"We were, however, taken aback when both the department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs, as the custodian of municipalities, and the South African Local Government Association, as municipal representative, went out and boldly welcomed the report and further congratulated municipalities that have performed better, essentially praising a fish for swimming," said Ramotlou.
He said municipalities were legally compelled to abide by the Municipal Finance Management Act and supply chain regulations.
"They are supposed to receive clean audit outcomes, there is, therefore, nothing special about a municipality that achieves this, it is a legal requirement which should be normalised."
Makwetu's report clearly showed that the audit outcomes of South African municipalities continued to regress.
For the year under review, only 31 municipalities improved, with 76 regressing - a net regression of 45 entities.
Out of the country’s 257 municipalities, 28 could not be audited as their financial statements were not submitted.
The Democratic Alliance controlled Western Cape was responsible for 45% of all clean audits. Ninety-three per cent of the province's municipalities also received unqualified opinions on financial statements.
Ramotlou said the AGs report was in no way cause for celebration.
"Of great concern to us is that the AG has highlighted the fact that the quality of statements presented by municipalities are continuing to decline, this despite the fact that municipalities have paid over R1.26 billion to consultants to help in preparing the financial statements, an expenditure which according to the AG has not resulted in value for money."
He said SAMWU demanded that where a municipality used consultants for the preparation of financial statements, while having people employed for the same function, the expenditure should be classified as fruitless and wasteful.
The National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (NAFCOC) in North West said it was concerned that none of the municipalities in the province had received a clean audit in the last three years.
"The Auditor General has again bemoaned the poor performance of municipalities’ lack of improvement in their financial accounting systems. The lack of accountability and consequences were identified as central to this morass," spokesperson Tshepang Ramosepele said.
He said NAFCOC condemned the "systemic non-compliance, deliberate wasteful expenditure and rampant corruption" that had led to a collapse in governance and accountability.
"It is clear that the provincial invention strategy introduced by MEC of finance, Motlalepule Rosho, has not yielded any results.
"We need a new strategy to combat the R5.5 billion lost by the province due to wasteful expenditure in the 2018/19 financial year. The chamber believes the situation is compounded by the fact that municipal councillors have abandoned their constitutional mandate, to play an oversight role.
"Councillors are in many instances part and parcel of the corruption in the municipalities. We also lament the amount of money spent by municipalities on private auditing firms with no tangible results," he said.