She says the lack of infrastructure maintenance in the municipalities in the Northern Cape is a significant threat to the community's health. "An example of this is the spillage of sewage due to pumps that are not working at the Gogga Pump Station in the Sol Plaatje Local Municipality. We are currently exploring a potential material irregularity on this matter."

The opposition party in the municipality questions the delay in utilising the multibillion-rand Water Services Infrastructure Grant (WSIG) to upgrade Sol Plaatje’s water infrastructure. "We were told repeatedly that everything was ready to begin, but the work was postponed twice, and now it appears to be postponed indefinitely," said the DA's Chris Whittaker.

Maluleke recently tabled the report on local government audit outcomes for 2021-2022. In the province, both political and administrative leadership have been viewed to have a slow response to implementing the recommendations of the previous report, and as a result, the overall audit outcomes are regressing even further. "Leadership should act to improve audit outcomes," Maluleke stated.

In response to the findings of the Sol Plaatje municipality, Whittaker says they are of the view that the poor audit outcomes and worsening state of financial management within Sol Plaatje are largely attributed to the instability in senior management positions. "While the council approved the recruitment of directors late last year, the process has not even reached the stage of council approving the screening panel for those positions."

The opposition party has placed the spotlight on the tender processes in the province, as they say, the council have received a lot of requests to approve variations and deviations. "This is understandable in emergencies, but it happens regularly with routine work and capital projects, such as Lerato Park electrification, Craven Street trading area and Carters Glen sewage line. The DA has previously questioned this in committee meetings, also requesting evidence of work done. Still, the matter is always deferred to another meeting and never sees the light of day," said Whittaker.

"The DA has previously raised its concern at the more than R500 million irregular expenditure incurred over the last five financial years. We already referred the matter to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) but it has not been investigated yet. The DA has already tabled a motion requesting unauthorised, fruitless, wasteful and irregular expenditure incurred since the 2017/18 financial year to be investigated, in addition to requesting the Special Investigating Unit to investigate allegations of political interference," Whittaker concluded.

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