Not one Limpopo municipality achieves a clean audit

The Auditor General has expressed concern over the rot in municipalities in Limpopo which has caused audit outcomes to regress in the province.Not a single municipality received a clean audit in Limpopo. This has been the case since the 2011/12 financial year. Also‚ not one company owned by any city or town in Limpopo was able to receive a clean audit. After achieving great strides in the 2013/14 financial year by registering 12 unqualified audits‚ in the 2014/15 financial year the province regressed drastically. These regressions were mainly as a result of instability in key positions at the municipalities‚ the AG noted in his latest report on municipalities released on Wednesday.Limpopo province has had some of the most violent protests in the country seen this year.Currently both the national and provincial departments of education are still trying to get schooling back on track after rioting residents burned down 20 schools‚ causing a total shutdown of teaching and learning in Vuwani and surrounding areas.In his comprehensive report‚ Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu complained that the quality of financial statements regressed over the five year period and the quality of performance reports was “stagnant”. This was despite expenditure on consultants by the municipalities in the province increasing five times to R122-million. These consultants were paid to help the municipalities improve their financial statements.Vhembe district municipality‚ where the troublesome Vuwani is based‚ spent R77-million of the money but the AG said this had “no impact on the audit outcomes”. The district received a disclaimer for three consecutive years (2011/12 to 2013/14) and an adverse opinion in the 2014/15 financial year.“The province's inability to sustain and further improve their audit audit outcomes in the year under review is an indication that limited progress has been made to address fundamental deficiencies in the internal control environment‚” he added.Irregular expenditure in Limpopo municipalities increased from R730-million in the 2010/11 financial year to R1.4-billion in 2014/15. Unauthorised expenditure rose from R588-million to R1.2-billion while fruitless and wasteful expenditure surged from R42-million to R81-million in the reporting period.