Tag: Preformance Report

The DA can reveal that the City of Tshwane, under the ANC, in the past financial year has committed serious financial irregularities which may render the annual report unlawful and irregular.

These include:

• The City’s annual financial statements for 2014/2015 has to date not been signed off by the City Manager, this means a legitimate audit could not have been carried out; and
• The version of Tshwane’s Annual Report presented to Council and the one submitted by Tshwane to the Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC) are manifestly different, which is unlawful and improper; and
• The City has never presented or tabled an Annual Performance Report as part of its Annual Financial Statements for 2014/2015 and this is against legislation – (Section 121 of the MFMA and section 46 of the Municipal Systems Act).

City of Tshwane is effectively unable to account for the outcomes of its spending for the 2014/15 financial year as its Annual Performance Report is being kept secret from the Council, from the public and voters.

While the City can easily show that money was spent, it cannot show where its budget was spent and what the outcomes of that spending is. The Auditor General gave a damning indictment of the City by finding that it was completely unable to show that the spending of its budget achieved the intended objectives as set out in the approved Integrated Development Plan (IDP) and the approved Service Delivery & Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP).

In terms of the National Treasury’s Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information (the FMPPI), the City should maintain adequate records to prove that spending indicators and targets are well defined and that the achievement of those indicators and targets were verifiable, specific, measurable, time bound and relevant.

The City must annually present this Performance Report to Council and submit the report to the Auditor General for audit.  This Performance Report should be part of the Annual Report of the City presented to Council for oversight.  Despite the irrefutable legal requirements of this report, the Mayor, Kgosientso Ramokgopa, has failed to present such a report to Council at all for oversight. As a consequence of this the recently approved oversight report is of no legal significance or force.

Despite the fact that the Mayor is clearly too ashamed to advertise the City’s failures too widely and that he has failed to submit this Performance Report to Council or to make it public, the Auditor General has apparently had sight thereof where the Auditor General found that:

“Overall, some significantly important targets were not reliable as I was unable to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence. The auditee’s records did not permit the application of alternative audit procedures. This was due to ineffective standard operating procedures for the accurate recording of actual achievements and a lack of adequate reviews on the validity of reported achievements against source documentation.”

This effectively means that the city cannot show that its spending has reached the intended target and achieved the measurable indicators.  Without this second report read in conjunction with the first it is impossible to determine that spending has been effective.

The picture is also not helped by the fact that the city has incurred an audited R1,5 billion in irregular expenditure for which no action is taken against any offending parties.

During the oversight process of the Annual Report the Democratic Alliance repeatedly called for a copy of the Performance Report to be made available for oversight, but the City Manager was unable to provide a copy of this damning report.

The fact of the matter is that neither the mayor nor his City Manager can show that money is spent effectively and it is clear to residents that objectives of spending are consistently not being met by the City.

The DA is determined to win Tshwane at this year’s municipal election, and together with residents of Tshwane, to usher in a government that delivers better services, cuts corruption and creates jobs.

Change is coming to Tshwane, with a new DA government, after Election 2016.

 

Solly Msimanga

DA Tshwane Mayoral Candidate

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