Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke briefed the KwaZulu-Natal legislature on the 2023/2024 local government audit outcome on Thursday.
Image: Picture: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)
KwaZulu-Natal’s political leadership, along with coordinating departments, must cultivate a culture of accountability, enforce effective consequences for violations and strengthen governance structures as well as ensure timely implementation of action plans.
This was the recommendation to the KwaZulu-Natal legislature by the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) Tsakani Maluleke who led a briefing on the 2023/2024 local government audit outcome, on Thursday. The AGSA found that audit outcomes are gradually improving, yet a lack of accountability and poor financial management impede service delivery
Maluleke said that although provincial leadership remains committed to improving municipal outcomes, only minimal progress has been noted since the previous year.
Mpofana Municipality was placed under Section 139 intervention. Maluleke said that as part of this intervention, initiatives such as Eskom debt relief, enhanced debt collection and data cleansing through Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) were implemented. These measures contributed to the municipality's improvement from a qualified audit opinion in the previous year to an unqualified opinion.
The report stated that at other municipalities that have been placed under Section 139 intervention, such as uMkhanyakude District and Uthukela District, the impact was minimal. This was primarily due to frequent changes in administrators, delays in their appointments and overall ineffectiveness in execution. The report stated that these challenges hindered the intended improvements, resulting in a failure to restore institutional integrity and financial stability.
Maluleke said that although the number of municipalities that had ongoing issues in the auditor’s report has decreased, many still face challenges with debt collection. Maluleka said the provincial treasury provided support to municipalities to recover from unfunded budget situations. The eThekwini Municipality's latest debt collection report reveals a staggering R32 billion in outstanding debt.
“A task team from the National Treasury was deployed at eThekwini to assist the Metro with the necessary monitoring and intervention required,” she said.
The AGSA found that strong compliance and financial management controls have been implemented, ensuring ongoing effectiveness. However, these improvements have not yet led to better service delivery.
The report found that the eThekwini Metro continues to receive an unqualified opinion with other matters. Concerns persist over deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate consequence management, but financial viability has slightly improved
Across KZN, the AGSA recommended
The AGSA also recommended that municipal managers must cultivate a strong financial and performance management culture that includes the diligent collection of all revenue owed, responsible spending and the prompt prevention and recovery of financial losses and waste, all aimed at enhancing service delivery.
Municipal leadership together with the assistance of Cogta/ Provincial Treasury must prioritise implementation of effective disaster management and key service delivery indicators, ensuring sufficient funding is allocated to meet these targets. Management should also expedite critical infrastructure projects.
Speaker of the KZN Legislature Nontombeko Boyce said torrential rainfal was having an impact on 11 municipalities.
“We know there will be certain towns that will be flooded before you even measure the rainfall. We know the effect will be felt firstly by the people and in the long run by us. The provincial government will have to redirect budgets that were meant to do something else,” she said.
The MEC for Transport and Human Settlements, Siboniso Dumasaid there is light at the end of the tunnel pertaining to the province. He said that working together in partnership was a good sign.
"There was once a time where in Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 institutions, some elements were seen as antagonistic. In some instances others took it as a sphere that was not working in partnership with the government. Now that this has been addressed, we are working together. Over the last three years we have lost almost R20 billion through fiscal discipline or what you will call cost cutting measures," Duma said.
Duma said this affected key service delivery projects.
zainul.dawood@inl.co.za
Related Topics: