Eastern Cape Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs MEC, Fikile Xasa, said the province’s poor audit outcomes were “an affront to the principles of good governance and sound management as guided by the Back to Basics programme”.
Xasa was commenting on the report by the auditor general, Kimi Makwetu, for the 2015/2016 financial year which found that Eastern Cape municipalities had incurred an irregular expenditure of more than R13bn, up from R5.4bn in the previous financial year.
In a statement on Thursday, Xasa said that he has already written to Mayors and Executive Mayors whose municipalities have incurred irregular expenditure requesting progress made in dealing with irregular expenditure.
The deadline for responses was in April 2018 and some municipalities have responded and others still outstanding.
“If nothing has been implemented yet, I expect municipal leadership to provide me with plans going forward and also reasons for inaction on this matter. It is the responsibility of municipalities to either recover the irregular expenditure or institute consequence management,” Xasa said.
He added that a multi-disciplinary task team will be put in place composed of Cogta, the Office of the Premier (OTP), Provincial Treasury and the oversight structures of the Eastern Cape legislature.
“The team will implement an Audit Improvement Plan for bad performing municipalities,” he said.
Xasa said that government will have to ensure that the issue of irregular, wasteful expenditure should be included in the performance contracts of Municipal Managers.
“The audit outcomes are disappointing and paint a bleak picture about our Province in terms of financial accountability. We expect municipalities to account how the irregular expenditure was incurred through an investigation by the Municipal Councils through their Municipal Public Account Committees (MPAC),” he said.
