Nketoana local municipality leaders have admitted to years of instability, financial mismanagement, a complete breakdown in governance, and R535-million in irregular spending.
Speaking before the portfolio committee on cooperative governance and traditional affairs, speaker Buyisiwe Makhoba painted a bleak picture of a municipality once praised as one of the best in the Free State but now facing severe challenges.
“To be honest, it is very painful to report the state of affairs of our municipality. There are serious instabilities that are causing most of our problems in our municipality.
“Once upon a time, Nketoana municipality was the best in this province. However, things went from bad to worse in the last seven years,” said Makhoba.
She claimed that the office of the premier and the MECs were working hard to restore stability.
She said between 2016 and 2021, the municipality did not have a functioning municipal public accounts committee (MPAC), but a new committee has recently been formed and is working to clear a large backlog.
This committee is dealing with the backlog from 2016 to date, saying fruitless and wasteful expenditure worth R90-million was investigated by MPAC and condoned by council, while unauthorised expenditures worth R445-million have also been investigated and condoned by council.
However, Makhoba confirmed that irregular expenditure was still under review, saying MPAC is committed to investigating this by October 30.
Officials axed for mismanagement
In terms of consequence management, she said the municipality had recently dismissed two officials in the finance department for misconduct and irregularities, and the director of corporate services was currently suspended for multiple charges.
“As the municipality we are trying by all means to make sure that things are done properly,” said Makhoba.
Jabulani Makubu, Nketoana’s chief financial officer (CFO), said the municipality had six consecutive disclaimers from the auditor-general — the most recent being the worst to date.
He said the committee had raised the six consecutive disclaimers that have been received by the municipality, and they have attributed that to the administrative instability that the municipality has been experiencing over the years.
“In the past eight years, we had six different municipal managers, and in the past 10 years, we have had five different CFOs.
“This includes ones that were in acting positions, and for almost two years of that period, the municipality didn’t have any CFO.
“I must indicate to the committee that since the new administration came in, the new administration being the current municipal manager and the current CFO from the financial year 2022/23, we tried to deal with the issues of disclaimers,” said Makubu.
Municipality’s worst disclaimer
He said they tried to fix the problems that caused the disclaimers and had managed to reduce some of the issues.
But political problems in the 2023/24 financial year got in the way and ended up making things worse for the municipality.
“Currently, we are sitting with the worst disclaimer that we have ever received in the last six years,” said Makubu.
However, he assured the committee that an audit action plan had been developed in partnership with the provincial government to address the issues.
“So currently, we are sitting with the worst disclaimer that we have ever received in the last six years.
“However, we have developed an audit action plan to try and address and redress those issues; we have developed it in partnership with the provincial,” said Makubu.
