Question NO463 to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
14 September 2022 - NO463
Mpumza, Mr GG to ask the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
Considering that the 2020-21 Municipal Finance Management Act Report by the Auditor-General highlights that during the five-year period between 2016-17 to 2020-21, only 61 municipalities had a better audit outcome, while 56 had regressed to having the worst outcomes, and noting that the specified report reiterates the call for ethical leadership to demonstrate change by strengthening transparency and accountability, as well as highlights that despite interventions the situation continues to deteriorate, what (a) is her response to the specified observations and (b) additional measures are being taken to ensure that interventions going forward have a meaningful and sustainable impact?
Reply:
The Auditor-General’s report does not paint a picture of a glaringly deteriorating state of local government audit outcomes between the 2016/17 to 2020/21 financial years. The most recent “Consolidated General Report on Local Government Audit Outcomes” reflects improvement on unqualified audit opinions. In 2019/20, 128 municipalities obtained unqualified audit opinions for both unqualified audit opinions with no findings and with findings, and in 2020/21, 141 municipalities obtained unqualified audit opinions for both unqualified with no findings and with findings. We may not have moved leaps and bounds, but steadily we are making progress toward improving the audit opinion outcomes by the Auditor-General.
- Political parties must send ethical leaders to municipalities, the ethical leadership at both political and administration is critical in stabilization of municipalities. The local government audit outcomes and CoGTA’s State of Local Government report confirms the correlation between failures in governance as a main driver for poor performance and undesired audit outcomes. To address the challenges, the Municipal Support and Intervention Plans (MSIPs) Framework has been developed by CoGTA, Provinces, SALGA and National Treasury to provide guidance on the development, implementation and the monitoring of the MSIPs.
On the 20th September 2022, the Minister will be launching the Local Government Anti-Corruption Forum and the Local Government Ethical Leadership Initiative in collaboration with key stakeholders. The Local Government Ethical Leadership Initiative project aims to facilitate a national dialogue on ethical leadership in municipalities, culminating in the development of a Code for Ethical Governance for municipalities that sets out the principles and practices for ethical governance and leadership in local government.
- The stability of municipal administrations is an important component both in building capacity and in creating a conducive environment. To strengthen institutional capacity, the Minister promulgated the Local Government: Municipal Staff Regulations which regulations prescribe minimum competency requirements for staff below senior management. This should be viewed as a game changer in the professionalization of local government. The Department also intends rolling out the prototype staff establishment project in municipalities to address challenges in the organograms of municipalities.
The Department has, through the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA), placed civil and electrical engineers in all provinces to assist municipalities in planning and executing of infrastructure projects. The focus of these engineers is on poor performing municipalities and those that lack technical capacity to deal with service delivery.