Parliament bemoans governance crises in municipalities
The chairperson of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Zweli Mkhize, has bemoaned the financial and governance crises in most of the country’s municipalities.
Last month, the Auditor-General reported that the country's municipalities spent R1.4 billion on hiring consultants to assist them with preparing financial statements for audit in the 2023/24 financial year.
The AG's report highlighted that only 41 of the country’s 257 municipalities obtained clean audits.
Chairpersons of the parliamentary Governance Cluster Oversight Committees briefed the media in parliament on Monday.
"The financial and governance crisis in our municipalities is deepening with profound consequences for service delivery and public trust.
"It's unacceptable that such an exorbitant spending yields so little value. Even more troubling is that many of these municipalities already have permanent staff tasked with performing this work."
Mkhize said this indicates a waste and a failure of systems, leadership and accountability.
"A total of 113 municipalities are currently operating on unfunded budgets, planning expenditure far beyond what they can credibly finance.
"This is reckless to the extreme, it amounts to planning for failure, and it undermines infrastructure delivery," he added.
ALSO READ:
