The South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) has blamed corruption at a political level for alleged maladministration at municipalities – saying municipal managers are being forced to act wrongfully or risk losing their jobs.
This after Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu addressed the media on Wednesday on the local government audits for the 2017/18 financial year – saying irregular expenditure among municipalities amounted to R25 billion. He says not a single municipality in the Free State, Limpopo and the North West received a clean audit.
Makwetu has attributed pervasive control and monitoring failures being behind only 18 out of 257 municipalities receiving clean audits.
Samwu’s Provincial Secretary in Limpopo, Patrick Aphane says, “In our sectors, CFOs are dismissed every day because they don’t agree with political mandates and corruption. What do you expect from management because the force these managers to do the wrong things and then they stand up there and say it is not our function, it is a management function and not political. They are the people that preside over the appointment of senior management. They appoint their friends and girlfriends and then they come and blame the very same people that were appointed, knowing very well that they are not skilled. If you have political leaders that are ethical and wanting to do things according to the book you will never have a problem.”
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