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The Select Committee on Appropriations has expressed disappointment at the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) for failing to properly brief it on measures and plans in place to achieve operation clean audit by 2014.

The Committee is particularly concerned about the fact that, out of all the audit queries raised by the Auditor General, the Department would prioritise the engagement with municipalities that got disclaimers and find out the root cause. According to the Committee, this is not sufficient and it is more like the Department doing nothing as the reasons for “root causes” are well known.

The Committee needs to know what the Department is doing to make sure that municipalities which received unqualified audits do not regress and what measures are in place to ensure that those that received disclaimers and adverse opinions move towards the targeted level.

Committee Chairperson, Mr Teboho Chaane told the department’s officials to go back and prepare a better report. “We cannot present this to the House and say the Department will meet and engage with municipalities and understand the root causes as to why certain municipalities received disclaimers on their audit outcomes,” he said.

Committee Members said based on the content of the presentations it would seem little was happening in terms of achieving the desired outcome of clean audits by 2014. “The two priorities in the Department’s presentation that have been identified mean nothing me,” said Mr Chaane. He added: “You are a national department that pushes a specific agenda and now you are faced with an explicit challenge and you report to Parliament that you can only do two things, ‘meet and engage’.”

Committee Members said they were interested in seeing what mechanisms were in place to achieve the desired results of the local government turnaround strategy which comprises operation clean audit 2014 and municipal infrastructure support programme, a policy proposal that is the brainchild of COGTA.

Mr Chaane said the Department could play a critical role in ensuring that a number of municipalities achieve clean audits, as long as the problems identified by the Auditor General were addressed. He said the Committee would invite the Minister and Director General to be present when the Department came back with a better report.