Despite regularly receiving poor audit reports from the Auditor-General, the Buffalo City Metro has failed to develop a plan to improve the damning findings and curb recurring negative outcomes.
This was contained in a report tabled before council recently by the chairman of the metro’s independent audit committee Velile Pangwa.
He lambasted the BCM for being all talk and no action when it came to changing the institution’s poor performance.
From February to April, BCM had not filled vacant funded posts, failed to spend conditional grants and paid excessive overtime.
Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu once again highlighted the BCM among the poor performers last week after it was found that in the 2014/15 financial year, the metro spent R479-million irregularly‚ R245-million on unauthorised expenditure and R480000 on fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Pangwa said if the BCM implemented the recommendations of its internal audit team it could lead to improved systems and ultimately improve audit outcomes.
He said there was “a culture of poor performance management”.
Other challenges Pangwa raised were:
lLack of consequence management of poor performance;
lSlow progress in IT and governance-related risks raised in both internal audits and the AG’s previous reports;
lLack of timeous review of policies and procedures; and
l Low capital spending which might negatively impact service delivery.
He urged BCM to utilise the fraud hotline as a tool to benefit the institution in combating fraud and corruption.
While he noted efforts made by management in trying to fix the problems, Pangwa added the committee believed “drastic steps” were needed to speed up the process so the municipality could improve its performance and service delivery.
Heads of departments were urged to put drastic measures in place to deal with excessive overtime paid as it was costing the metro thousands.
Acting city manager Nceba Ncunyana promised that in the next financial year “most” of the problems raised would be improved.
Should Ncunyana improve the systems, officials and managers are set to face the music as Pangwa said consequence management needed to be enforced against poor performers.
BCM under fire for not improving poor audits
This was contained in a report tabled before council recently by the chairman of the metro’s independent audit committee Velile Pangwa.
He lambasted the BCM for being all talk and no action when it came to changing the institution’s poor performance.
From February to April, BCM had not filled vacant funded posts, failed to spend conditional grants and paid excessive overtime.
Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu once again highlighted the BCM among the poor performers last week after it was found that in the 2014/15 financial year, the metro spent R479-million irregularly‚ R245-million on unauthorised expenditure and R480000 on fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Pangwa said if the BCM implemented the recommendations of its internal audit team it could lead to improved systems and ultimately improve audit outcomes.
He said there was “a culture of poor performance management”.
Other challenges Pangwa raised were:
lLack of consequence management of poor performance;
lSlow progress in IT and governance-related risks raised in both internal audits and the AG’s previous reports;
lLack of timeous review of policies and procedures; and
l Low capital spending which might negatively impact service delivery.
He urged BCM to utilise the fraud hotline as a tool to benefit the institution in combating fraud and corruption.
While he noted efforts made by management in trying to fix the problems, Pangwa added the committee believed “drastic steps” were needed to speed up the process so the municipality could improve its performance and service delivery.
Heads of departments were urged to put drastic measures in place to deal with excessive overtime paid as it was costing the metro thousands.
Acting city manager Nceba Ncunyana promised that in the next financial year “most” of the problems raised would be improved.
Should Ncunyana improve the systems, officials and managers are set to face the music as Pangwa said consequence management needed to be enforced against poor performers.
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