MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Mossel Bay Municipality has, for the sixth consecutive year, achieved a clean audit report.
This latest achievement is for the 2016/17 financial year.
The Auditor-General's preliminary report was considered by the municipality's audit committee on 28 November.
Two senior representatives of the Auditor- General's office, Melanie Joffee and Deirdre Basson, attended this meeting and explained the audit outcomes to the committee.
"Following the conviction and sentence of the erstwhile chief financial officer, Marius Botha, the Auditor-General employed a specialist fraud auditor to focus its audit on transactions that might have appeared suspicious.
"The Auditor-General's report indicates that no findings were reported, during the audit," municipal spokesperson Colin Puren told the Mossel Bay Advertiser.
New framework
"What makes this clean audit so remarkable is the absorption of added pressure caused by the voluntary early adoption of mSCOA (multi-dimensional Standard Chart Of Accounts).
This is a new classification framework for all municipalities in the country. It is also aligned to the international classification framework.
The implementation of mSCOA will improve uniformity and allow more comparisons across all levels of government.
National Treasury has also prescribed that the 15 Business processes that inform the new classification framework must be reviewed and this is a very tedious process," Puren added.
National and provincial
The good news follows national and provincial audit results released recently by the Auditor-General, Kimi Makwetu.
According to this report, the Western Cape and Gauteng have again topped the charts with the best results.
"It is clear these results are being sustained from year to year, due to leadership emphasising a culture of accountability," Makwetu stated in the report.
He said that, in contrast, outcomes in Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were erratic over the past four years, caused by a lack of urgency at leadership in responding to the root causes of the audit outcomes in these provinces.
Makwetu said his office "remains committed to emphasising the need to do the basics right". Hence the central theme of his report being "accountability for government spending: from the plan to the people".
ARTICLE: NICKEY LE ROUX, MOSSEL BAY ADVERTISER NEWS EDITOR
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