Briefing the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on the state of municipalities, the Auditor-General (AG) has indicated that "supply chain management non-compliance is the main cause of irregular expenditure" in these municipalities. Kimi Makwetu says the North West alone has during the 2017/18 financial year recorded irregular expenditure exceeding R4 billion. The briefing, set to be focus more on the 2018/19 Local Government Audit Outcomes, is expected to paint a clear picture on municipalities' financial woes. 

OFM News previously reported that municipalities in Central South Africa and others have for years been in the spotlight for their shocking service delivery, maladministration, corruption, political interference, high vacancy rates and mismanagement of funds, amongst other issues. 

The last report by Makwetu painted a bleak picture of the financial state of municipalities when he outlined that only 18 of the 257 municipalities had a clean audit. Of the 18, 12 were in the Western Cape. In Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Northern Cape each province had one municipality with a clean audit. While the Eastern Cape had two municipalities with a clean audit, the Free State and the North West had none. 

Municipalities in these two provinces made national headlines when four in the North West were implicated in the VBS Mutual Bank saga and lost billions of investments while the ones in the Free State made headlines over their escalating Eskom debt. 

The Mangaung Metro also become the first metro to be placed under administration and downgraded twice by Moody's credit ratings.

OFM News