Central SA
Free State municipalities' irregular spending grows by R2 billion─── LUCKY NKUYANE 12:10 Fri, 17 Jun 2022
The Free State municipalities have continued their wasteful spending of taxpayers' money with irregular expenditure increasing by almost R2 billion.
The irregular expenditure increased from R7,63 billion to R9,18 billion. The Auditor-General (AG), Tsakani Maluleke, in her report, says the audit outcomes of the province regressed over the term of the previous administration. She says this is because the municipal Public Accounts Committees did not perform timeous investigations.
Maluleke on Wednesday told Members of Parliament (MPs) that three cash-strapped municipalities, including the Qwaqwa-based Maluti-A-Phofung, the Theunissen-based Masilonyana, and the Boshof-based Tokologo Local Municipalities failed to trace the trail of money spent by the municipalities.
ALSO READ: Free State municipalities fail to trace taxpayers' money
The Free State municipalities are also said to have been outsourcing their responsibility by appointing consultants after year-end to prepare the financial statements and to construct and correct the underlying information. Maluleke adds that a total of R254 million had been spent on consultants since 2016/17.
“The reliance on the audit process to identify errors in the poor-quality financial statements submitted for auditing also continued. All auditees needed to make significant adjustments to correct material errors in the figures presented. If this had not been allowed, another seven auditees (41%) would have received qualified audit opinions. Four municipalities have a history of disclaimed opinions and their 2020-21 financial statements were not submitted or only recently submitted for auditing,” Maluleke further adds.
Maluleke has further raised a concern about what she terms the inaction by political and administrative leadership and said this continued to be a deliberate obstruction to municipalities’ effective functioning. Maluleke has warned that the provincial leadership should be very concerned about this state of affairs.
Only six municipalities in the Free State managed to obtain unqualified opinions but with findings, and the rest of them obtained outstanding audits.
MEC for Cooperative Governance (Cogta), Mxolisi Dukwana, previously said his department wants to look into ethical leadership, to best serve residents across municipalities in the province.
