Cape Town – Bidvest Wits got their 2016-17 Absa Premiership campaign up and running with a 2-1 win over Kaizer Chiefs at Bidvest Stadium on Tuesday evening. 

Goals from Elias Pelembe and Thulani Hlatshwayo leading the Clever Boys to all three points in what was an early season heavyweight clash in Braamfontein. 

Lorenzo Gordinho pulled back a late goal for the visitors, but it proved of little importance as the Students held on for what was their first league home victory over the their illustrious hosts since November 2002. 

Bidvest Wits dominated the opening exchanges, but Chiefs started to find their rhythm and were just in their stride when the Clever Boys struck through Pelembe in the 34th minute. 

The Mozambique international with an expert diving finish from a Sifiso Hlanti cross following good work by Frank Mhango in the build-up – a wonderful passage of play rewarded with a goal. 

Hlatshwayo doubled the visitors lead in the 65th minute following poor marking by the Amakhosi. 

Their strength for most of the past few seasons, set-pieces have proved to be their Achilles heel of late and it again proved the case. ‘Tyson’ rising highest – unmarked – to nod home for the Clever Boys’ second on the night. 

Gordinho gave Chiefs some hope of a late fightback in the 82nd minute with a superb glancing header, but after Emmanuel Letlotlo skied a late chance, Bidvest Wits held on for a rare win on home soil over the Glamour Boys. 

Source: http://www.news24.com

THE Standing Committee on Provincial Public Accounts (SCOPA) provincial chairperson, Mahlakeng Mahlakeng sent stern warnings to all head of departments (HoDs). Mahlakeng said according to audit general reports, most HoDs in the province do not adhere to the legislative frameworks that deal with procurement processes.

This was during an oversight meeting that the committee held with the Finance, Economy and Enterprise Development department (FEED) over the progress report on the provincial departments and their entities’ irregular expenditure and implementation of consequence management recently.

The AG reported that, the provincial legislature which is also a government institution was not included in the list of departments presented by the HoD, but has an irregular expenditure of R9million.

The AG’s office said that the presentation stated that no unauthorised expenditure was incurred during the 2015/16. According to AG, this is not a true reflection of audits.

The Deputy Business Executive in the Office of the AG, Schalla van Schalkwyk said 60% of provincial departments including municipalities have not done anything about fruitless and wasteful expenditures in the prior years and current status is most likely to increase.

“Accounting Officers fail to act according to what the constitution stipulates, through the legislative framework. A R28 million was incurred on the prior years on the irregular expenditure.

“That has doubled in the current year to R41 Million. This is due to failure of Accounting Officers to take insurmountable action against officials who cause such irregularities,” Schalkwyk said.

The SCOPA provincial chairperson, Mahlakeng Mahlakeng said they were concerned about the lack of competency of Accounting Officers. Mahlakeng added that it was a concern for accounting officers for not taking action on consequence management of officials committing irregularities leading to disclaimers.

“We will not accept HoDs to be lenient on officials and give us many excuses that they could not recover monies lost due to failure of not knowing who has committed such deficiencies.

“We are not going to allow inactive Heads of Departments to continue to let officials waste tax payers’ money on wasteful and fruitless expenditures, without any investigations or implicated costs to be recovered,” he said.

The committee strongly opposed the current statistics of the North West province.  Mahlakeng said that action should be taken to rectify this challenge and deal with those who contribute negatively in the departments.

“We urge the FEED department to spear-head the course of showing measures put in place to curb the challenges. FEED managed to achieve a clean audit,” he said.

The Head of Department of FEED, Ndlela Kunene made a presentation before the committee. Kunene said the presentation was on the progress of clearing unauthorised, irregular and fruitless expenditure for the departments, which was not updated according to the Auditor General’s office.

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Municipalities in Bokone Bophirima province are ready to provide much needed services to communities. This follows the swearing-in of councillors, and the appointment of Speakers, Mayors, Executive Mayors and Single Whips in different local and district councils across the province recently, to constitute a council and kick-start the fourth administration of democratic local government.

MEC for Local Government and Human Settlements Galaletsang Gaolaolwe said now it’s time for people to get what they deserve from their municipality. “We are happy that an era of elections has passed so that we can focus on providing services to communities.  We wish to welcome all the elected councillors. They should be aware of the task ahead of them and we wish them all the best of luck. It’s all hands on deck as we will be rolling up our sleeves and ensure services to our people” said MEC Gaolaolwe.

MEC Gaolaolwe said local government is at the cold face of services delivery and we dare not to fail our people. “It is the responsibility of each and every municipality to provide services to our communities. We want to see less service delivery protest action in this term. Access to clean running water, which is a basic right, remain one of the biggest challenge that we facing however we need to everything in our power to provide our people with water. We have great expectation in the in-coming councils and we hope they will fulfil their immediate mandate diligently” concluded Gaolaolwe.

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