AG criticises slowness in addressing internal control deficiencies

National and provincial governments would have recorded much-improved audit results for the 2014-15 financial year were it not for the slow response in addressing audit recommendations aimed at improving internal control systems and eliminating governance risks and other concerns raised by his office‚ Auditor-General (AG) Kimi Makwetu said on Wednesday.

Releasing this year’s audit outcomes of national and provincial government departments and public entities (auditees)‚ Makwetu said he had observed that management at most auditees (73%) “have been slow to respond to the (audit) recommendations aimed at assisting them to improve key internal controls and addressing identified risk areas.

“This contributed to audit outcomes for 2014-15 that only improved slightly since 2013-14”.

Makwetu said that while the marginal improvement in audit outcomes was commendable‚ the government could have recorded a higher margin of improved results had leadership stepped up the pace in addressing internal control deficiencies identified in the previous audit.

Stepping up the pace‚ he said‚ was about consistently narrowing the space for possible errors or abuse in handling public resources through leadership-driven efforts.

“Those auditees that have progressed‚ or maintained their previous year’s positive audit outcomes‚ have stuck to these basics of clean governance‚ practically showing that clean audits are easy to attain and maintain if these fundamentals are in place‚” the AG said.