By Alicia Mmashakana
The Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) has raised serious concerns over persistent governance failures and service delivery challenges at the Mangaung Metro Municipality in the Free State.
This follows a briefing on Friday by the Auditor-General on the municipality’s 2023/24 audit outcomes, which revealed a continued pattern of mismanagement and inefficiency.
According to the Auditor-General’s report, Mangaung’s Integrated Development Plan, Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan (SDBIP), and its overall budget remain misaligned.
Mangaung Metro has now received three consecutive qualified audit opinions, for 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24.
“We observed that they would budget and plan to do things, conduct public participation, and collate the information, but when you look at their performance focus, there is misalignment,” said Odwa Duda, Business Unit Leader at the Auditor-General’s Office.
SCOPA pointed out a lack of skilled personnel and ineffective contract management in the infrastructure unit as key contributors to stalled and failed projects.
As a result, the municipality achieved only 45% of its service delivery targets in the 2023/24 fiscal year, despite spending 111% of its allocated budget.
SCOPA chairperson Songezo Zibi stressed that municipalities are critical to delivering essential services and must be a top oversight priority in the 7th Parliament.
“Every home, business, and government installation is in a municipality, meaning municipalities are at the forefront of service delivery,” said Zibi.
“When governance is not working in municipalities, the processes aren’t working, the money is not being managed properly, people get away with corruption and maladministration, and it is impossible to deliver services efficiently under those conditions.”
Sue-Ellen Steenbok, Deputy Business Unit Leader at the Auditor-General’s Office, told Parliament that Mangaung receives about R6 billion annually but allocates just R792 million to capital expenditure.
“For a metro dealing with major infrastructure challenges, they are clearly not spending enough,” Steenbok said.
The Auditor-General further flagged weak internal controls, poor financial planning, and persistent governance failures.
In 2023/24, the municipality incurred R278 million in irregular expenditure and R123 million in wasteful expenditure.
Only 2% of the budget was allocated to infrastructure maintenance, well below the recommended 8%.
“We’re dealing with a situation where the accounting officer is not taking appropriate action,” Steenbok said.
“We can escalate this to the Special Investigating Unit, the Public Protector, or the Department of Water and Sanitation, which we’ve already done in some cases. If necessary, we can recommend a certificate of debt, but we hope it doesn’t come to that. For now, we are still in the remedial stage.”
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