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The North West MEC for Local Government and Traditional Affairs, China Dodovu has raised his concern over municipalities that do not submit their annual financial statements for audit purposes.

MEC Dodovu said this recently at Huhudi hall in the Dr, Ruth Segomotsi Mompati district in Vryburg at the 1st 2012 MuniMec meeting with municipalities in the North West where he met Executive Mayors and Mayors, Municipal Managers and Chief Financial Officers, with an intention to support and strengthen relations between the department and municipalities.

He dubbed the situation at municipalities as being in a crisis mode, indicating that non–compliance to legislation, non-submission of annual financial statements, lack of support, unavailability of supporting documents happened perpetually at municipalities and that this has continued to impact badly on the audit outcomes as pronounced recently by the Auditor General.

“Our view is not to sit back and succumb to the situation which must be turned around. We need a radical approach in dealing with the situation and therefore we need to be firm and make unpopular decisions which will ensure total turnaround in our municipalities, we cannot continue to operate like this”, MEC Dodovu said.

He committed the department to continuing to assist municipalities that are unable to prepare their annual financial statements. “Through this kind of intervention, we should be able to turn around the situation, but we can only do so with the necessary support and cooperation from all parties. We need to clarify our various roles to ensure that municipalities adopt and implement their budgets, follow applicable regulations and guidelines, procedures and submit their annual statements on time”, he indicated.

According to the Auditor-General’s report of 2010/11, for the second consecutive year none of the 24 municipalities and four municipal entities in the province received a clean audit.

Two municipalities (8%) and one entity (25%) received unqualified audit opinions with findings, while 29% of the municipalities and entities received either qualified or disclaimed/adverse audit opinions. These results do not reflect the complete picture, as the outcomes of 15 municipalities (63%) and two entities (50%) are not included in this analysis due to the late or non-submission of financial statements.