Durban - The failure by the eThekwini Municipality to discipline errant staff members could result in the municipality receiving a negative audit opinion from the office of the Auditor-General of South Africa, the city has been warned.
The latest report from the municipality’s audit committee states that the municipality needs to implement the good governance directives issued by the AG’s office or risk getting a negative audit outcome.
Among the concerns of poor governance are the continued incidents of irregular expenditure by the city and lack of consequence management against errant staff.
The audit committee had briefed the councillors during the executive committee meeting on Tuesday on the municipality’s performance for the first quarter of the year, from July to September 2022.
Audit committee chairperson Siboniso Shabalala said while the city had been able to achieve an unqualified audit in the previous financial year, it was at risk of regressing from this because it had not dealt with issues raised by the AG in the previous audits including consequence management.
The audit committee also spoke on the issues that made it hard for the city to hold staff members accountable who have been accused of wrongdoing. It found that the City Integrity and Investigations Unit (CIIU), central to investigating allegations of wrongdoing and producing the reports that could be used to discipline errant staff members, was short staffed, hindering its ability to kick-start processes of consequence management.
“The CIIU team is still experiencing resource constraints with regard to the funding of positions. It said however funding had been received to fill four vacancies within the unit and the recruitments processes were under way,” said the report.
“The audit committee members raised concerns over the lengthy delays in the tender process to provide resources to assist with the backlog of cases and requested this be expedited to ensure the department has adequate capacity,” said the report.
DA councillor Thabani Mthethwa said the matter raised by the audit committee should have been addressed a long time ago. “It is true (that we could regress). The DA along with the other opposition parties have been calling on the city to implement consequence management. If the city fails and the issue is raised by the AG, it will be a repeat finding, which means the audit opinion would regress.
“We call on the city officials to hold the employees accountable,” he said.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said they had long raised the issue of irregular expenditure. “While there is always a defence that there had been value for money (in the work undertaken), the fact that this is irregular expenditure means there has been poor planning.”
ANC councillor Nkosenhle Madlala said the exco would hold a meeting to engage the reports on these matters.