FINANCIAL reports tabled before a delegation of the National Council of Provinces have painted an unflattering picture of Gauteng municipalities.

The reports, presented to NCOP delegates in the provincial legislature last week, revealed that municipalities in South Africa's economic hub racked up more than R245-million in wasteful, fruitless, irregular and unauthorised expenditure.

A draft report by the NCOP laid the blame squarely on the lack of accounting oversight by political leaders as well as a rot within the municipalities' supply chain divisions, through which tenders were awarded.

Among some of the worst offending municipalities which presented their financial reports were: Sedibeng district municipality (R88-million); Randfontein local municipality (R53-million); Ekurhuleni (R14-million); City of Tshwane (R13-million) and Merafong local municipality (R13-million).

The City of Johannesburg, according to its own submissions, racked up R48,498,000 in unauthorised expenditure due to exceeding its approved budget.

Irregular expenditure topped R397-million while material losses owing to fraudulent activities, electricity distribution losses and unaccounted for water amounted to R6.2-million, R1.2-billion and R827-million respectively. Technical losses and loss due to theft, tampering and faulty meters came to R568-million and R649-million respectively.

The DA-led Midvaal municipality incurred irregular expenditure amounting to R36,000 because a report containing the figure was "submitted late by one day as a result of late filing of necessary documents by the contractor".

The NCOP report showed that Midvaal "has an effective and efficient supply chain management unit which is fully functional ."

However, Midvaal also incurred material losses of R12,430,808 and R3,113,860 arising from electricity and water losses, respectively.

The municipality wrote off R12,537,267 while also identifying "low productivity and high turnover of staff, theft or misuse of council property as well as overspending" among its top 10 risks.

The report blamed "ineffective supervision", "non-existent or dysfunctional audit committees and accounting officers not fulfilling duties and responsibilities" as the major causes of irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

NCOP delegates recommended that the MEC for local government [Humphrey Mmemezi] together with mayors should strengthen their oversight role in ensuring there is compliance with legislation and that "political and administrative leadership should ensure that there is compliance with supply chain management policies".

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Mon May 20 06:20:28 SAST 2013 ::

Apr 23, 2012

Sinudeity

Cant wait to hear JJQ's spin on this.
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Apr 23, 2012

Papane

Heads must just roll on this one. People are misussing the state coffers as they wish. Taxpayers are being charged an arm and a leg and yet their contributions are misspend in this fushion. Our government is so accurate on attending to usseless issues and turning a blind eye on those which matters most. On the other hand there is this stupid e-tolling project which the country will not get 100% turnover. If you look at all these nonsense which is happening in this country, there is a serious need of change in regeme, honestly.
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Apr 23, 2012

MorenaWaPolelo

DA's Midvaal waisted only 36k wow and is not thier fault,
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Apr 23, 2012

oldlady2

Sin, while reading this the same thought crossed my mind. Better you save, cope, paste, print it in booklet form, write down date and time of this article etc, because in the very near future you're going to be challenged to prove this again. I understand fruitless and wastefull. To me that means someone did not do their job properly. What I do not understand is irregular and unauthorised. Especially unauthorised. That sound like theft to me.
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Apr 23, 2012

Nwanawamukalaha

And Zuma and his "yes boys" are quick to go public about putting 5 departments in Limpopo in administration. I'm of the opinion that though Limpopo's depts were underperforming, the same should have been done with other provinces. But nee, Mabuza, Mokonyane, Zweli Mkhize and Magashule are Zuma's pals and they seem not to deserve to be tagged bad leaders through their bad provincial performance.

Zuma's cabinet is just rotten to the core..............
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Apr 23, 2012

Nwanawamukalaha

Also, one wonders why AG Nombebe never revealed this in his provincial auditing reports....
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Apr 23, 2012

mambaaai

Sinudeity and oldlady2 what the bet there will be a jjq "no show" here today?
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Apr 23, 2012

MommaC

One has to wonder why we have a provincial government. They do absolutely buggerall for their fat salaries
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Apr 23, 2012

oldlady2

Mambaaai, no bet. The odds will be against me.
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Apr 23, 2012

mambaaai

MommaC and its the people they said they would care about that sufffer..... think of that Michael Jackson song "They Dont care About us" ........... writen about these exact guys .................. "all I wanna say is is they dont care about us!!!!!!!!!!"
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