The Democratic Alliance in the Eastern Cape has called for urgent intervention to get the financial affairs of municipalities in the province back on track.
That is after the Auditor General revealed that the province's 2018/2019 financial year has had the worst audit results in the past six years.
DA MPL, Retief Odendaal, said the latest findings clearly show that local municipalities simply do not have the capacity to manage their own finances.
He said urgent intervention from the provincial government would be needed to prevent the total collapse of service delivery at local government level.
“During the latest year under review, the Auditor-General gave eight municipalities disclaimers, as the information provided was not sufficient to reach conclusive findings,” Odendaal said.
“This was the worst performance by Eastern Cape Municipalities since 2012 and stands in stark contrast to last year’s results where only three Municipalities received disclaimers,” he added.
Odendaal said that the number of unqualified audits awarded to Eastern Cape Municipalities has regressed to 16, down from 19 last year.
