Municipalities across Limpopo are still struggling to fill in critical senior managerial positions including Municipal Managers and Chief Financial Officers.
This was revealed by Premier Stan Mathabatha during a special inter-governmental forum held at the Ranch hotel outside Polokwane on Wednesday. Mathabatha says the filling of these posts is critical for the proper functioning of municipalities and has an impact on financial management.
The Premier summoned Mayors and Executive Mayors to the urgent forum, after receiving a comprehensive diagnosis of Limpopo’s municipal audit processes form the Auditor General (AG) which paints a gloomy picture of the management of finances across municipalities.
Mathabatha stressed out that despite a meeting in July which was meant to prepare municipalities for the audit season, most municipalities are still failing to implement basic audit control systems.
“Last week during the Provincial Budget Lekgotla, we all received our comprehensive diagnosis of our municipal audit processes. It was clear from the diagnosis that a number of things we agreed about are still not implemented. Part of the diagnosis we received was that some of our municipalities submitted their annual financial statements to the AG after the deadline,” he says.
He also noted that some of the identified problems relate to the filling in of critical posts in municipalities, saying according to a report received at the recent Lekgotla, out of the 27 posts of Municipal Managers in the province, only 15 are filled, resulting in 12 vacancies.
Chief financial officer positions are also a concern as Mathabatha notes that only 14 positions are filled, leaving 13 municipalities in the province without CFOs.
A frustrated Mathabatha had very strong words for municipalities who are still without strategic managers, saying they have had sufficient time since the last elections to ensure that vacancies were filled.
“Perhaps there are challenges that we do not know about, hence we have called you to this meeting to take us into confidence,” he stresses.
He says most dysfunctional municipalities are due to poor governance, political instability, poor audit outcomes, high vacancy rate at senior management level and poor spending on Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIG).
In conclusion, Mathabatha cracked the whip, saying that it cannot be business as usual for Mayors and councillors who are presiding over dysfunctional municipalities.
