Seven KZN municipalities achieved clean audits - AG
Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke says while there has been encouraging improvement in the audit outcomes of KZN municipalities, most remain in the unqualified space.
Out of the 54 municipalities in the province, seven have received clean audits, up from four the previous year.
uMsinga, uMshwathi, Umvoti, Richmond, UMlalazi, the City of uMhlathuze, and the King Cetshwayo District Municipality all received unqualified audit outcomes with no findings.
Thirty-seven municipalities received unqualified outcomes with findings.
They include eThekwini, Msunduzi, KwaDukuza,Ray Nkonyeni.
"Let us not tolerate this ongoing non-compliance because if you look at this, you've got 13% of municipalities being able to comply with the law and the rest not," said Maluleke.
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"If you look at the budget, it's the smaller municipalities that are able to comply with the law. Whilst they are seven, making up 13% in terms of the numerical representation of those municipalities, seven out of the 55 they only make up 8% of the expenditure budget.
"What that tells us is that 92% of the budget in the province at local government is being spent in a way that's not consistent with the law."
Briefing the KZN legislature on the local government audit outcomes for the 2023/24 financial year, Maluleke said three municipalities are in the adverse and disclaimer zones.
Umzinyathi District Municipality and Umzumbe in the south coast are in the adverse category while Endumeni Municipality is languishing in the disclaimer zone.
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"It is absolutely intolerable that anyone should get away with having a disclaimer or an opinion. An adverse opinion is not much better because it simply says that the people in charge of running the public resources in their hands are neglecting their duty to act as stewards.
"They're not able to show what they've done with the money put in their hands. And if there are repeat offences in this regard, it does continue to diminish the trust between citizens and their leaders."
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