EWN By Vicky Stark, Journalist and multimedia reporter
702 and CapeTalk’s Mandy Wiener spoke to Thabiso Ndebele, who’s the local governance expert and managing director of Ntiyiso’s Revenue Consulting Division.
The Gauteng government has slammed the province’s municipalities for poor financial controls, after only two municipalities, Midvaal and West Rand, received clean audits.
702 and CapeTalk’s Mandy Wiener spoke to Thabiso Ndebele, who’s the local governance expert and managing director of Ntiyiso’s Revenue Consulting Division.
“What is the main reason that so many Gauteng municipalities still continue to fail to achieve clean audits?” asked Wiener.
Ndebele said at the heart of it is irregular expenditure. “And this fundamentally means that the process wasn’t followed to the T.
“One of the key drivers when you start to look at irregular expenditure is around the tendering and the procurement violation.
“Instead of advertising to say, listen, we’re looking for somebody, looking for a service provider to fix a pipe in 30 days, we actually limit the time frame to 10 days, or we don’t get the three required quotes.
“So, whilst that might mean that maybe the pipe is fixed, we actually have bypassed a competitive bidding process,” said Ndebele.
Does a poor audit automatically mean corruption, or can there be other causes?
“There could be other causes, but you can’t write out the element of corruption…
“So, you’ve got multiple reasons why something would be classified as that, but mainly it is a violation of the process and it could be, as I said, reasons why you did not follow that particular process, which of course is different from a wasteful expenditure where you would have spent money.”
Wiener said we’ve got a situation where the provincial government is upset that the municipal governments are not getting clean audits. “So how does this get resolved?”
It requires discipline, said Ndebele.
“I think when you start to look at the two municipalities that were mentioned, Midvaal as well as West Rand, Midvaal has been doing this for 13 years in a row, it shows you there’s a couple of things that are put in place.
“The very first one, you’ve got strong leadership from a council perspective that really holds the accounting officer accountable. But the second one is the internal controls within the supply chain.
“The third one, if I had to now get into the operations, is really emphasises on the infrastructure maintenance, because I think that’s where the tyre hits the road in terms of why do we have these irregular expenses or expenditure findings versus the service delivery on the ground.
“We know that if we maintain our infrastructure, then we’re able to provide the service and the likelihood of that, the services are going to be paid for. But if we don’t get that right, we paint ourselves into a corner.”
Listen to full interview: https://www.ewn.co.za/poor-financial-controls-under-fire-as-expert-warns-procurement-violations-drive-gautengs-audit-failures/
