Councils have ignored my advice and it shows in worsening audit outcomes, Kimi Makwetu says
Almost two-thirds of the performance reports submitted by municipalities in 2016-27 had material flaws and were not credible enough for the council or the public to use
Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu has sharply criticised municipalities for ignoring his advice over the past five years, as their audit outcomes have steadily deteriorated.Speaking at the release of the 2016-17 municipal audit findings, Makwetu said his office had been warning municipalities about their administrative lapses since 2013, to no avail."It is now five years later, and we are still faced with the same accountability and governance challenges we had flagged throughout these years. There has been no significant positive change towards credible results: instead we are witnessing a reversal in audit outcomes," said the auditor-general.Only 33 municipalities got a clean audit in the 2016-17 financial year, which ended on June 30 2017. Of the 257 municipalities assessed by his office, the audit outcomes in 45 regressed, while only 16 improved. In 2015-16, a total of 48 municipalities got a clean audit.Makwetu said the quality of financial statements submitted by municipalities had...
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