Gauteng COGTA consistently underspends on its annual budget while municipalities suffer
26 September 2019
The Gauteng Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) has once again underspent on its budget. This was revealed in the department’s annual report for the 2018/19 financial year.
According to the report, the department underspent across all its four major programmes, yet they are unable to provide necessary support to our embattled local and districts municipalities.
The department underspent R19 million in Programme One: Administration. In Programme Two: Local Governance, they underspent by R7,3 million and R3,3 million on Programme Three: Development Planning. The department also underspent R1,7 million on Programme Four: Traditional Institutional Management.
The reasons given for the department’s under expenditure are projects not completed, failure to finalise procurements timeously, and funding withheld by the department due to the non-submission of financial records. All of these relate to project and financial management, of which it seems the department is incapable and inefficient.