Staff reporter
Bloemfontein – The dismal performance of Free State municipalities in the audit reports by Tsakane Maluleke, Auditor General of South Africa has caught the attention of Toto Makume, acting Premier and MEC of both Human Settlement and COGTA.
With none of the all 21 municipalities in Free State failing to get a clean audit, while 11 dysfunctional, Makume started by identifying vacant key positions (Municipal Managers and Chief Financial Officers) as a contributing factor.
Makume went further to say another element was municipalities don’t submit Annual Finance Statement and water plants that are managed by people without required skills.
“We made a commitment that all vacant municipalities positions (Municipal Managers and chief financial officers) be filled by the end of June and we are also going to start with skills audit as people are misplaced. We are no longer going to appoint incompetent.
Also, we are going through Public Service Commission’s report and there are people who are in positions who do not have qualifications in government.
What perpetuated this is people were hired to push corruption not based on competence.”
To address the auditor general’s report Makume said they are going to establish a forum and they have invited all municipal managers to a meeting on the 14 June 2023.
We have invited all municipal managers to a meeting and we also established a forum where Hod and CFO Treasury and COGTA will meet regularly with Municipal Managers to look at internal audit reports to improve our books o that we submit to AGSA when the time comes.”
In conclusion Makume warned government employees to refrain from taking unlawful instructions from politicians.
“We are urging our employees to refrain from taking instructions from politicians especially unlawful ones because they will be the ones facing the music and be in court like we see now.”
This is a developing story.
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