"Councillors to blame for poor audit reports" Nombembe

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 Auditor-general, Terrence Nombembe says councilors are the biggest cause of poor audit outcomes in the Eastern Cape.

Nombembe was presenting the audit results for the municipalities of the Eastern Cape in East London on Wednesday.

The results revealed that only 9 out the 45 municipalities have achieved unqualified audit results, a far cry from the AGs' benchmark of clean audits by 2014.

The auditor general says councilors as decision makers in the filling of key vacancies, need to be well capacitated or they will just go back to sqaure one.

Meanwhile, local government MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane says the lack of training of councilors, and the expiry of key position contracts last year, is the biggest factors in the poor audit outcomes.

A close of 65% of new councillors and lack of training is one of the things. The second issue is that the staff turnover for as many of the Section 57/56 managers contracts come to an end and a number of vacancies when audit time comes people that are there are not necessarily in a position to issue information as required by the AE" he said.