By REGINALD KANYANE
20 October 2025- North West Premier, Lazarus Mokgosi has welcomed the 2024/25 audit outcomes which have demonstrated consistent and improved performance for provincial departments. Mokgosi said the performance mirrors governments’ ongoing efforts of building a capable, ethical and developmental state as per the dictates of Priority 3 of the Medium Term Development Plan (2024-2029).
He further said in the latest audit cycle which ended on 31 March 2025, a total of 8 out of 12 departments, received unqualified audit reports with the Provincial Treasury and the Department of Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation, receiving clean audits. Mokgosi added that only the Department of Education and Health received qualified audit outcomes with the latter falling short of an unqualified audit opinion as compared to the previous financial year.
“The government is duty bound to ensure that public coffers are spent wisely. Section 195 of the Constitution impresses upon public servants to promote and maintain high standards of professional ethics.
“We must at all material times demonstrate and maintain high ethical standards, efficient resource use, accountability, transparency, and responsiveness to the needs of our people, particularly the poor and downtrodden” he said.
Mokgosi said the regression of the of North West Department of Health from unqualified to qualified audit opinion and the failure by the North West Department of Education to improve to unqualified outcome for two consecutive financial years compels government to double its efforts in ensuring that the two department get out of the woods. He said these are the two important departments with the lion’s share of the provincial budget with the constitutional mandate of ensuring that the people receive uninterrupted provision of services in their hospitals, community health care centres, primary and secondary schools.
“So, new techniques will be implored in enhancing accountability and transparency to ensure that they improve their audit outcomes. Preceding the past two financial years, the province recorded 5 qualified audit outcomes prompting the provincial government to increase its support which encapsulated a comprehensive financial oversight and accountability plan.
“These efforts are now coming to fruition. We are particularly encouraged by the two clean audits outcomes and we believe that audits of similar kinds are on the horizon in other departments which just fell short of a clean audit outcome,” said Mokgosi.
He said their intervention measures will now include paying a more detailed attention to State-Owned Institutions to build public trust, enhance service delivery and improve the lives of the people of the North West.
The Guardian 