Cape Town - Gauteng municipalities have become strong, according to Gauteng MEC of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and Human Settlements, Paul Mashatile.
He was responding to the Auditor General’s report on the performance of Local Municipalities, which found that in Gauteng 33% of municipalities achieved clean audit opinions, 50% of municipalities achieved unqualified audit opinions and 16% achieved adverse audit opinions.
“Gauteng municipalities have become strong and capable institutions that are managed and governed efficiently. This is due to the interventions to make these municipalities financially viable,” Mashatile said in a statement on Wednesday.
He said that these successes can be attributed to capacity building, training skills development, hands on approach and technical support rendered to all municipalities.
Mashatile said the report reflects directly on the efforts and interventions between the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and municipalities to improve the efficiency of local government.
“The department in partnership with Gauteng Provincial Treasury and municipalities have achieved major improvement in municipality audit outcomes as it relates to both the achievement of clean and unqualified audit outcomes and a massive reduction of both audit report and management letter issues as raised by the auditor general.”
The MEC added that as an urgent intervention, support to the two municipalities with negative opinions in Gauteng will be intensified for the financial year 2016/17.