VEREENIGING. – Irregular expenditure at Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) has gone up from R870 million to R1 billion.

In addition, the municipality has regressed badly from an unqualified opinion to qualified opinion.

Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM) Speaker, Maipato Tsokolibane, told council on Wednesday 23 September that the municipality had some “serious challenges” to address following the first details of the latest AG report that was revealed at council.

“Irregular expenditure has gone up and up and up,” she said.

The Auditor-General’s (AG) report was expected to be tabled before council on Wednesday.

The report could however not be tabled as the representative from the AG’s office that was supposed to do the presentation was under quarantine and could not physically attend the meeting. Instead the presentation was done on Zoom and shown to council on a projector screen. Unfortunately, the pages/slides from the report did not display and the speaker asked that the matter stand down until the next council meeting next week, where there the report will be tabled and later debated in council.

Tsokolibane told council that certain issues needed to be addressed, such as infrastructure challenges, irregular expenditure, assets that cannot be accounted for, loss of water and electricity as well as the irregular expenditure that was mentioned.

Emfuleni mayor. Reverend Gift Moerane said the municipality would welcome recommendations made by the Auditor General, so that the municipality could correct the mistakes made.