Durban - The Auditor-General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke wants the Umngeni Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal to investigate and hold officials accountable for R32 million which it has flagged as irregular expenditure.
The expenditure is for the financial year which ended in June 2022 and it was incurred during the tenure of the ANC which was ousted in November 2021 after the local government elections.
The AG’s 170-pages long audit findings were handed over to the municipality on 29 November 2022.
The audit which was seen by IOL shows the abuse of public funds was rife and AG’s recommendations were not acted upon in the past.
Maluleke said she picked up 14 instances of irregular findings that were not investigated to determine if officials were reckless and if yes, forced to personally pay back the wasted public money.
Among the 14 irregular expenditures picked up was a R1.1 million tender which was irregularly issued to buy “traffic management technology”, another one being a tender of R13 million where the scope of work was widened without any verification.
The AG also raised her ire that the municipality’s tax affairs were not in order, the previous administration gave one tender to a blacklisted supplier, awarded another tender to a company not in the central supplier database (CSD) and a tender was given to a person employed by the state.
“Based on the 14 instances of irregular expenditure selected for audit, all were not investigated, resulting in a total deviation rate of 100%.
“This results in a non-compliance with legislations… management did not review and monitor compliance to ensure that all instances of irregular expenditure are investigated,” the AG noted in her report to the municipality.
She then recommended that actions should be taken against officials found responsible for the irregular expenditure and the lost money personally recovered from those officials.
The mayor of the municipality, Chris Pappas, said they are working on implementing all the recommendations of the AG.
“The AG identified a number of UIFW (unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure) items.
‘The majority of the items are historical (compiled over a number of years).
“Many of the items related to supply chain process where there were deviations and/or non-compliance with the law.
“Some of the deviations are legal and compliant and were recorded as such. These usually involve emergency procurement or unforeseen issues.
“These are recorded every month and presented to council.
“However, the majority of the findings relate to historical issues of non-compliance.
He added that they have developed an action plan which is already in place.
“The Audit Action Plan has been prepared in terms of the correct processes.
“The Management of the municipality sat in December to deliberate on the AGs report and made proposals to council in this regard.
“The Action Plan will be presented to council at the end of January when council is scheduled to sit.
“This plan includes a number of interventions to strengthen internal process and systems to avoid reassurance of the same issues.
“In addition, the Audit Action Plan proposes a number of consequence management procedures to commence.
“Once presented to council it will be implemented fully. The plan will also be approved/endorsed by the independent Audit Committee,” Pappas said.
Pappas added that the audit outcomes have slightly improved in the past few months.
“We are pleased that in a period of 7 months in government we were able to address a number of previous issues that the AG found.
“This resulted in an improved audit outcome from Qualified to Unqualified.”’
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