Tshwane second worst in country
Shocking results by the Auditor-General this week indicated that the capital city fared the second worst where unauthorised and irregular spending were concerned.
The Tshwane metro has recorded the second highest figure of unauthorised and irregular spending in the country with only the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality in Eastern Cape faring worse.
Despite receiving an unqualified audit, with findings, in the 2014/15 financial year, the metro’s figure stood at almost R1.1 billion in irregular expenditure.
In addition, Tshwane had R785.5 million of unauthorised expenditure and R1 million fruitless and wasteful expenditure last year.
Releasing the audit results in Pretoria this week, Auditor-General Kimi Makwethu said municipalities around the country wasted more money during the last financial year than five in years ago, when the local government term started.
He said the 272 municipalities in South Africa recorded R15.3 billion in unauthorised expenditure.
The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality performed the worst with R1.348 billion in irregular expenditure, only slightly higher than Tshwane’s.
Nelson Mandela Bay however, recorded a smaller amount in unauthorised spending amounting to R34.4 million and R442.6 million in wasteful and fruitless expenditure – less than Tshwane’s more than R780-million.
Tshwane received an unqualified audit last year, but with findings, meaning the capital had passed the qualifications on its financial statements, but there were issues that were found to be significant enough to mention in the findings of the audit.
Only 33% of the municipalities in Gauteng received clean audits, including Tshwane – second to Western Cape where 73% of municipalities received clean audits.
Makwethu said that nationally, the number of municipalities that received financially unqualified audit opinions with no findings had increased from 13 five years ago, to 54 during the last financial year.
He said a quarter of all the country’s municipalities were in financial trouble with the most worrying aspect being that over the past three years, municipalities were spending resources they did not have.
In addition, some councils took very long to pay their debt while some creditors were not being paid at all.
He said it was very alarming that since the 2010/11 financial year, irregular spending by municipalities had more than doubled.
The Tshwane metro said it needed to study the audit before commenting.
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