North West Premier, Mme Thandi Modise has urged municipalities in the province to appoint senior managers who are competent for the jobs they occupy as they are supposed to be the face of service delivery.
In her address to the AGSA Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) Road show at Rustenburg Civic Centre on Thursday, Premier Modise said municipalities with incompetent Municipal Managers, and Chief Financial Officers (CFO) should remedy the situation by sacking them and employ managers who are skilled enough to deliver services to the people.
“The reason why municipalities are performing at unacceptable levels is because they are appointing unqualified and unskilled people in strategic management positions. We need to take a bold step in municipalities to ensure that we employ managers who have what it takes to delivery services to our people,” she said.
Premier Modise warned municipalities that continue to employ unskilled managers that they will be dealt with accordingly. Modise cautioned that the Provincial Government has resolved to uproot corruption and will thus not close its eyes to fraud and corruption and that those involved in corruption are going to face the wrath of the law.
“There will be no cousin and or sister when the Special Investigating Unit concludes investigations into fraud and corruption at municipal level,” she said emphatically.
The Audit outcomes of Local government for the financial year 2010/2011 that ended on 30 June 2011 revealed that only nine municipalities out of 24 municipalities and two municipal entities out of 4 had submitted their financial statements for auditing.
North West Finance MEC, Louisa Mabe said that province would withhold concurrence with appointments in which her department and the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs were not part of the recruitment processes.
MEC Mabe stressed that issues of mismanagement, irregular expenditure, fraud and corruption will be addressed when right people are appointed in right positions.
She stressed that high level of non-compliance with applicable legislation such as the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) and Municipal Systems Act (MSA) is the main reason why municipalities are not meeting audit requirements.
"Lack of adequate internal controls, supporting documentation and general lack of capacity and skills to fully comply with the prescribed accounting framework were the main contributing factors for municipalities having to report findings on both the balance sheet and income statement,” she added.
The Provincial Head of the Office of the Auditor General, Schalla Van Schalkwyk stressed that there is lack of proper leadership in municipalities which leads to non- compliance with the MFMA.
Van Schalkwyk said that in most municipalities people do not submit their monthly and quarterly reports due to poor financial management that led to poor quality of information, late and non-submission.
He said that the main problems in municipalities are basic internal control compliance issues that can be avoided by a good leadership.
Councillors requested that the supply chain management function should be withdrawn from municipalities.
Kalane Rampai, a partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers reminded municipal officials that It is not “our turn to eat” it is our turn to work.”
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Premier Modise urges municipalities to appoint skilled managers
Province
