Pretoria - The SA Municipal Workers Union in Tshwane wants mayor Randall Williams and the Section 79 Committee to take responsibility for failure to exercise oversight over the municipal finances.
Regional secretary Mpho Tladinyane said the union was disappointed by the City's adverse report presented by the Office of the Auditor-General to Tshwane for the period 2021/22.
However, it was not just the former CFO Umar Banda, who should take the blame.
Tladinyane said it was of great concern that this was the first time that the City received an adverse audit.
“This, however, is not surprising as the City’s financial performance has been gradually declining, especially in the last two years. We have always known this City to be exemplary for good governance and delivery of services. Unfortunately, this is now in the past.
"The political leadership cannot only blame the CFO. The executive mayor, MMC for finance Peter Sutton, MMCs and applicable Section 79 committees should take responsibility for their failure to exercise oversight over the City of Tshwane finances,” he said.
In the presentation to council on January 2, the Office of the Auditor-General (AG) attributed the adverse outcome to there being no balance between expenditure and budget and the City spending more money than what was budgeted for.
There was no proper record keeping, with leave pay accrued overstated by R800 million. No proper asset keeping, with properties and equipment being understated by R4.9 billion. Some assets stated as finalised whilst in construction, the AG said.
He said there was no proper internal control on salaries and wages. The City could not determine the actual amount of salaries and wages. Some people were paid for work not done due to the City having not followed proper recruitment purposes. There was also a failure to budget for salaries.
“There is also irregular expenditure, no proper systems to disclose irregular expenditure of R10.4bn, non-disclosures and understatements of loans and bonds totalling R2bn, unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure continues to balloon.”
He said as if the City’s problems were not enough, Eskom indicated that the City owef R1.4bn and that some of the current accounts were not paid. The City of Tshwane is losing a lot of electricity, leading to a high Eskom bill, and revenue collected from electricity is forever declining.
Rand Water has also come into the picture, indicating that the City owed it more than R400m. High water losses were incurred through vandalism of unprotected bulk water infrastructure assets, leaking pipes due to age and illegal connections.
“These audit findings are a concern to workers, noting that rating agencies have been downgrading the City of Tshwane. We understand clearly the need for the City to attract investors and to borrow from various financial institutions to finance mainly capital projects.
“With the current situation the City will struggle to attract investment or borrow and will be faced with hefty repayment costs of servicing such loans.
“Workers, regardless of affiliation, would like to see this City being run well and its finances managed prudently for the benefit of all stakeholders. We are deeply concerned by the narrative that seeks to deflect issues affecting our City and sow division instead of reflecting on the key root causes of the problems at hand.”
Williams said he wanted to assure residents that the administration took the findings by the AG seriously.
He said in the last two years as mayor, the City continuously received unqualified audits. He added that he wanted to be clear that the decline in the City’s audit performance was unacceptable, and it was critical as the political leadership that they stepped up, took responsibility and immediately plotted a path towards achieving better audit outcomes.
Pretoria News