TAU: No Excuses For Governance Lapses Highlighted By AG’S Audit Report

Deputy Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Parks Tau said that a set of systematic issues needed to be resolved in the local government sphere to ensure better performance of municipalities.

He was speaking at the release of the consolidated local government audit reports in Pretoria where the Auditor-General revealed that the majority of the country’s municipalities received qualified audit opinions in 2018 to 2019 financial year.

The Auditor-General’s report has exposed once more a shameful state of affairs that cannot be explained away, even by government leaders responsible for the portfolio.

Tau said that there was no excuse for the lapses in governance and administration which featured prominently in the report.

“Some of these are administrative and control issues addressing issues of management, administration and control through the system, so at the one level it’s a fundamentally political task about oversight and leadership with regards to what needs to happen.”

Irregular expenditure amounts to R32 billion while the majority of finances are either spent on consultants and on projects which do not come to fruition.

Tau said that while they accepted that the fiscal constraints in the sphere limited the extent of delivery, requisite policy and institutional instruments should be developed.

EWN