COGTA Minister urges improved and professionalism in municipalities as she welcomed the AG report
27 June 2019
The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma welcomes the Auditor-General municipal audit report released today, 26 JUNE 2019 for the 2017/18 financial year.
While the report showed some improvements across municipalities, it largely presents a picture of a decline in some key areas. The Minister welcomes the improvements outlined by the Auditor General but the overall regression by some municipalities is of serious concern.
The AG lamented the fact that "local government role players have been slow in implementing, and in many instances even disregarded, the audit office's recommendations". Minister Dlamini Zuma expressed concern that there are some municipalities which have not responded positively to address areas of challenges raised by his report in 2018.
The Minister fully supports the work of the Auditor General and would like to urge municipalities to accept the outcomes as a very useful yard stick to gauge their general performance as dictated by our constitution. Through the years, this report corroborated CoGTA’s own assessment through the Back to Basics programmes which indicates that a number of municipalities are dysfunctional.