By TDN
Rustenburg-During the North West Standing Committee on Public Accounts (NW SCOPA) hearing in Rustenburg to address Annual reports of municipalities in the Bojanala District the Moretele Municipality’s viability as a local service delivery agent once again came under scrutiny.
The shocking state of financial affairs in the Moretele Municipality underlined the unachievable goal of a clean audit in the North West Province in 2014. The Municipality received its 6th consecutive disclaimed opinion by the Auditor General (AG)
The AG reported that sufficient appropriate audit evidence for R40 061 971 made in terms of the municipality’s supply chain management policy could not be obtained.
In response the Moretele delegation alleged that documentation was stolen by some undisclosed persons from the municipality.
In addition, irregular expenditure of R2 753 855 was incurred due to payments made in contravention with the municipality’s supply chain management policy
“The municipality overspent the total amount appropriated in the municipality’s approved budget by R7 294 481 while simultaneously “materially underspent its conditional grants” by R54 665 238 mainly allocated to municipal infrastructure projects. The under expenditure on infrastructure in the municipality plagued with longstanding problems can mainly be attributed to the lack of capacity in the administration caused by the ANC’s cadre deployment practices where expertise had been replaced with loyal ANC cadres lacking capacity” DA Chris Hattingh said.
DA in the province said the decline in financial accountability, witnessed by NW SCOPA during the public hearing; evident in most NW Municipality AG reports puts an end to any realistic hope of a 5 year old much propagated Clean Audit 2014 campaign.
“The only solution to turn NW Municipalities around remains a skills and capacity audit followed by the re-introduction of integrity, professionalism and capacity into NW Local authorities – a process that would cost hundreds of millions and could take years” Hattingh concludes.-TDN
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