The DA will request a parliamentary inquiry by the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) into a number of glaring failures by the National Department in providing proper support and oversight to local government.

The committee’s press release today regarding their position on Minister Gordhan’s plans regarding these results is completely premature, given that neither the Minister nor the Auditor General (AG) have come to report on the audit comes.

Indeed, according to the AG, a staggering increase of R542 million in fruitless and wasteful expenditure by municipalities was recorded between 2011/12 and 2012/13. Moreover, during the same period, “irregular and wasteful expenditure” increased to R11, 6 billion, up from R6, 7 billion in 2011/12.

319 Audits were conducted of which only 22 municipalities and 8 municipal entities received clean audits. No municipality in the Free State, North West, Eastern Cape and Limpopo received a clean audit.

According to the report, a number of major gaps exist in support provided by the Department to local government. These include:

• The level of assurance (support provided by COGTA to municipalities during the auditing process) provided by National COGTA for the 2012/13 financial year was not satisfactory;
• A lack of coordination between the branches at national COGTA dealing with local government support and between National COGTA and the nine provincial COGTA’s was noted. This undermined the effectiveness of the oversight;
• COGTA did not have an integrated monitoring, reporting and evaluation system for local government, as required by the Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information (FMPPI);
• Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency (MISA) was faced with serious capacity challenges and relied heavily on systems and processes of the Development Bank of South Africa in order to perform its activities;
• A draft document outlining ICT challenges does not articulate a plan for actual implementation of an ICT framework at local government level;
• The Local Government Turnaround Strategy (LGTAS) unit lacked adequate capacity, skills and funding in 2012/13 in order to ensure visible progression towards clean administration in local government;
• COGTA provided limited councillor training in 2012/13; and its strategic plan provided no planned support to provincial governments.

In fact, the AG went on to note that a number of initiatives to support local government were planned, however these “have not been implemented to a degree that the advantages of such are leverages and ultimately noted in the audit-outcomes of municipalities.”

It is essential that the Minister get to grips with these major short-comings and start making sure that the systems are in place to provide the necessary support to local governments who are failing.

Parliament should take the first step in making sure this happens by scheduling such an inquiry and demanding answers for the very serious problems identified by the Auditor General.