The Auditor-General has slammed the “arrogance” of municipal officials in ignoring supply chain management controls.
|||Auditor-General Terence Nombembe has slammed what he described as the “arrogance” of municipal officials and employees in ignoring supply chain management controls.
He said he could not describe this tendency, in which councillors and employees at local government had been tendering for contracts issued by municipalities where they worked, in any other manner.
Nombembe was addressing the alumni of Unisa’s College of Economic and Management Sciences on the audit outcomes of the municipalities he released last week.
The outcomes revealed that about 95 percent of municipalities had failed to receive clean audits despite many of them spending millions on consultants to assist with handling of their internal auditing.
“Controls around procurement are highly neglected in local government. They are not doing competitive bidding, which is a primary requirement of supply chain management.
“It is negligence and arrogance because they know nothing will happen to them anyway.
“When employees and councillors are bidding for contracts from institutions where they work, how do you explain that?” asked Nombembe.
According to Nombembe, fully capacitated financial departments at municipalities were struggling with the basic concepts of accounting, while the consultants were struggling to relate accounting standards to public sector work.
He warned that municipalities ran the risk of people reaching tipping point, with communities saying they had had enough as authorities failed to account for the public money they were spending.
Nombembe said this was because one common feature between municipalities that had experienced service delivery protests and those that had not was that neither could demonstrate what they claimed in their financial statements they had spent money on.
“It is as simple as that: if you say you have done something you must be able to demonstrate what you have done.
“Even though some of them have not had service delivery protests, they have failed to account for how they spent their allocated money.
“It will be a matter of time before everybody reaches a tipping point and says enough is enough,” warned Nombembe.
The auditor-general’s report also revealed that officials in key positions at municipalities were incompetent, which Nombembe said was a critical factor to the lack of performance.
“When we went there, we were still dealing with people who did not know what they were doing, and others who had no regard for the work they were doing.
“Some of them need to be retrained while others simply need to be replaced.
“This is a fundamental issue, that we need the right people in local government.”
Nombembe urged the alumni to apply for jobs in the government to strengthen its capacity and to offer skills that were much needed there.
“One of the solutions to this problem of accountability in the public sector must start at a point of attracting people to come and work in the public sector.
“People believe it is not the sexiest or best place to work, but that needs to change,” said Nombembe.
Nombembe’s report also revealed that about R227 million worth of contracts had been awarded to close family members of employees and councillors in many municipalities.
Municipalities in the Eastern Cape and the North West were fingered for this, spending R181m and R38m respectively.
The report also revealed that 54 municipalities had underspent their budgets and conditional grants from national and provincial treasuries. - Pretoria News
mogomotsi.magome@inl.co.za