Expenditure exceeding R1 billion on finance staff and consultants, yet NW municipalities without a single clean audit
2 November 2020
During the Auditor-General's briefing on municipal audit outcomes before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in the North West Provincial Legislature recently, the Democratic Alliance (DA) requested a comprehensive schedule of consultant costs for accounting, financial and asset management and other internal control services rendered by external service providers for the 2018/19 financial year.
The average salary of R90 000 paid to each administrator of the 15 municipalities that were under Section 139(1)(b) intervention during the same period, along with their teams, are not included in the calculations contained in this report.
Out of these 15 municipalities, 9 obtained disclaimed audit opinions despite the excessive expenditure of over R1 billion on salaries of finance staff and services of external finance consultants.
North West municipalities spent the most on consultants out of all other provinces and yet is ranked under the poorest performing. Not even the finance experts accompanying administrators, could improve the dismal state municipalities are in.
It is therefore not surprising to find that finance departments within municipalities fail in the most basic duties such as transactional record keeping and monthly reconciliations.
This raises serious questions about the efficiency of these departments and why no action is taken to provide the necessary training to employees and to terminate the costly services of consultants.
The DA previously requested the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to present a turn-around strategy that will address poor financial management, lack of skills and the non-existence of consequence management within North West municipalities, but to date, no response was received.
This failure to respond is a clear indication of her utter disregard for citizens’ Constitutional right to basic services and her lack of political will to change the status quo.
We will write to both the MEC for Department of Finance, MotlalepulaRosho and acting MEC for Department of Cooperative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (COGHSTA), Boitumelo Moiloa, requesting them to conduct a skills audit of all municipal finance personnel and to redirect funding spent on consultants towards training and equipping of Budget and Treasury staff.
We will further conduct our own analysis of all these consultants who failed to deliver and propose to the MECs that they be blacklisted and barred from participating in any business with municipalities.
From the DA’s excellent track record of service delivery and good governance, it is evident that we are the only party that can bring about real change.
Issued by Freddy Sonakile,DA North West Member of SCOPA, 2 November 2020
