Municipalities to use Treasury expertise | Pale weekly

SASOLBURG – Provincial treasury will help struggling municipalities with skilled experts to improve their audit results.

This was unveiled by MEC for Finance Ketso Makume on the first day of the supervisory visit by the Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs in Bloemfontein on July 24.

Municipalities were examined by the committee after the results of the report of the Auditor General, which painted a terrible situation around municipalities in the free state.

No municipality in the province of Free State has obtained a clean audit. For example, in the local municipality of Nala, Amos Goliath has been appointed as manager after months of instability, which the institution saw with two most important financial officials and two speakers.

This led to instability, which often stood out with protests of services. To prevent that situation, MEC said for cooperative administration, traditional affairs and human settlements, Saki Mokoena, that he would involve the political party whose mayor had been deployed at the institution.

Makume said that the move to implement experts will enable struggling municipalities in the province.

“We will use our experts at our municipalities to help. We are clearly concerned about the Audit morning report, but it is also an opportunity to improve the board in our municipalities, so that they ultimately do what is expected of them, namely offering services to people,” Makume said.

The switch to use experts in municipalities will not only enable them, but also save the institutions money.

“The use of consultants is expensive and has not worn any fruit because we have not received any clean audit. We are therefore going to use internal capacity to help our municipalities and lift it out of this rot,” he said.

In an interaction without bumps, chairman of the committee, Dr. Zweli Mkhize, in particular from the municipality of Lejweleputswa, what they do for their respective communities, given the problems with which they are confronted.

“What do you do? The conditional subsidy you receive is used to pay salaries, and there is little left for service supply. The question then becomes: what do you do for people?” Requested mkhize.