Gauteng departments receive clean audits

Lesufi made the announcement on Sunday afternoon at the Gauteng Clean Audit Awards ceremony in Sandton, where departments and entities were honoured for exceptional audit performances.

Addressing the attendees, he says the clean audits indicate an improvement compared to the previous financial year.

“We are proud that there’s no single department in our province that has a disclaimer. There’s no single department in our province that have a qualified report but of all the departments, generally, we can say we’ve got good reports across all the departments, but we’ve got eight that are clean out of fifteen.

“If you check those particular figures, it’s quite clear that we are indeed on the upward trajectory. I want to thank the agencies and thank the departments that have got clean audits.”

Lesufi added that some departments still need encouragement to achieve clean audits.

“There are seven departments that have unqualified audits, which is good, but they have matters of emphasis that I think that they can enter the family of clean audits.

“These departments, we need to encourage them to enter, to work very hard and ensure that they provide the clean audits that we are expecting from them, and these are the departments that I really believe that if they can work extra hard, they can have clean audits.”

-Financial Challenges-

Lesufi further stated that the Gauteng Provincial Government is making strides in ensuring that there is good financial management and services are delivered to the residents of Gauteng.

He says despite the financial pressures, there’s movement in addressing, amongst others, the e-tolls debt and incomplete infrastructure projects.

“We want to clarify that we don’t have a financial challenge, but we’ve got financial pressures, which is a reality, because we are the only province that attracts more people to come to our province.

“I’ll give you one example, the Department of Education have just finalized the number of new learners that came to Gauteng and its now standing at 60,000, that’s the new learners that came to Gauteng this year, and if you have 60,000,and one school can accommodate 1,000 learners.

“We literally need almost 60 new schools. 60 new schools to accommodate the 60,000, and naturally we’ll have pressures.

“But that does not mean we don’t have money. It’s just that we have to manage it in a manner that doesn’t create this challenge. So, we are proud that today we are demonstrating that the finances, no matter how low they might be, the finances that have been given to us, we can account to them.”

-e-Tolls-

Premier Lesufi expressed pride following the first e-toll instalment being paid by the provincial government last Monday.

“We are proud that we’ve made our first instalment to the e-tolls debt in this country.  People said they don’t want e-tolls and people boycotted paying this e-tolls and the debt was, increasing.

“We’re subjected to pay interest, now that we have paid our first instalments, and they gave us a report that SANRAL now has the capacity to go and borrow money to build new roads.

“They could not borrow money to build new roads because borrowers were saying you are bad payers on the e-tolls, So we’ve taken a bullet on behalf of the country by paying this e-tolls debt so that our highways are no longer a parking bay.

“Our highways can be expanded and new roads can be built on this aspect. I’m raising this because there have been many critics who said that we had no business in paying this e-tolls debt and if we didn’t pay this e-tolls debt, there will be no single road that will be expanded from national in our province.

“Roads are an economic enabler without those particular roads, we’re not in a position to do, but we have also raised our concern that we have borrowed money so that we pay this particular e-tolls from government.

“The interest that has been charged, it is as if it’s not government to government relations and that creates problems for us, that this is government to government, it’s not government to a bank where we are charged the interest that we have been charged and then creating serious problems.

“We are pleased that we have managed to make the first payment of this e-tolls debt and we are pleased that Sanral now has the capacity to raise funds, and we are pleased that we will now be in a position to expand the maintenance of our roads, especially R21.

“Those that are utilizing R21 will have seen that when we arrive there, you have to stop literally because of the challenges. Now with the decision that we’ve taken, it unblocks those kind of challenges and then we have been in a position to ensure that our roads in our province can grow.”

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