BY OBAKENG MAJE

The Democratic Alliance in North West vows to leave no stone unturned and to pull all stops to govern Potchefstroom after the 2016
Local government elections.

Democratic Alliance Legislature leader in North West, Chris Hattingh said tt is clear that the Tlokwe Municipality, once the North West flagship
municipality has now earned itself a tittle of the most failing municipality in North West, and also becomes an
institution with limited accountability and questionable financial
practices.

This came about after the North West Standing Committee on Public Accounts (North West SCOPA) held a public hearing to interrogate the Tlokwe Municipality (Potchefstroom) on their Audit outcomes for the 2013-2014 financial year on Wednesday.

According to Hattingh, the Auditor General (AG) inter alia reported that unauthorized expenditure of R235 248 036 and irregular Expenditure of R27 954 946 was incurred during the
current year and irregular expenditure of R364 370 504 of prior years.

“Fruitless and wasteful expenditure of R134 138 incurred during
the financial year and fruitless and wasteful expenditure of R1 552 150 of
prior years has not yet been dealt with in terms of the Municipal Finance
Management Act (MFMA),” said Hattingh.

He also further explains that the AG further reported that the municipality materially underspent the capital budget by R9 165 633 and as a consequence service delivery was
affected negatively.

“Impairments of R52 443 392 and material losses of R30 225 058
respectively were incurred as a result of a significant impairment of
debtors and electricity and water losses.

“The AG further reported that unauthorized, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred by the municipality was not investigated to determine if any person was liable for the expenditure as required by law,” he said.

He also accused the North West municipalities and provincial departments where cadre deployment without the required qualifications, expertise, experience and capacity has become the norm.

“North West SCOPA heard that the municipality for the past 5 years only had a Chief Financial Officer for a limited period and for the rest of the period had to rely on an official acting in that position.

“During the public hearing it has also become clear that required procedures including disciplinary actions, criminal charges and the recovering of funds will-fully expended because of unauthorized, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure, did not happen,” Hattingh said.

According to Hattingh, The Nexus forensic investigative report, addressing a series of irregularities involving senior African National Congress officials more than two years after it was received by the Municipality, has not yet been interrogated by the Council.

However Tlokwe City Council refutes the claims brought forward by Democratic Alliance in a statement pertaining 2013 /14 AG findings on Tlokwe City Council.

Tlokwe City spokesperson, William Maphosa said the claims highlighted by DA North West Legislature leader, Chris Hattingh are late rebound that has already been taken over by events.

“The issues they raise are not new as the municipality has long dealt with the report and conclusively corrected the issues raised.

“In fact the Municipal Public Accounts Committee has early as March this year held a series of public consultative meetings to table the AG report and indicated what corrective measures it was undertaking in that regard,” Maphosa said.

He said it is now an accepted fact that during the 2013/2014 there had been an institutional instability as a result of the frequent and revolving political leadership between the ruling party and opposition parties.

“Consequently the municipality had three different Acting Accounting Officers.

“Each Acting AO appointed a new bid committee members, handover between the 4 different procurement committees was troublesome and in January 2014 all reports at the Specification, Evaluation and Adjudication Committee were returned for review, quality control and correction where required,” Maphosa outlines.

He said that resulted in a further delay in procurement and the implementation of capital projects as well as other concomitant challenges.

However, Maphosa said most of these issues have been addressed and some are in the process of being addressed.
Tlokwe City spokesperson said most of 2013/14 projects were converted to multi-year projects to accommodate the revised MIG allocation of R20m because MIG 2015 spending was over the 80% mark.

“In fact this year the municipality received a windfall of R25 million that was diverted from some municipalities that failed to perform and re-allocated to Tlokwe due to our good performance of MIG spending.

“In the final analysis, this municipality obtained a qualified audit opinion in the 2010/11 financial year. The following year in 2011/12 it got an unqualified opinion with matters of emphasis,” he said.

According to Maphosa, the 2012/13 opinion is also unqualified, but with reduced matters of emphasis.

He said nobody can therefore deny that the audit findings of 2013/14 are being addressed and the progressive trend of correction is proceeding irreversibly.

-TDN

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