Accounting 101: Eastern Cape gets experts in to teach officials

The Eastern Cape, where most municipalities are plagued by weak internal controls, aims to bring in external experts to teach officials in its 39 municipalities basic accounting skills, reducing reliance on costly outsourced accounting services. The move exposes the sheer dearth of critical skills at local government level in the province. Regarded as one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, the Eastern Cape comprises two metropolitan municipalities, six district municipalities and 31 local municipalities.

In June, auditor-general Tsakani Maluleke said the province had made some progress in municipal audit outcomes over the past five years, but persistent governance weaknesses,struggling metros and service delivery failures continued to hamper progress, she warned. She credited the Eastern Cape provincial treasury, the co-operative governance department, and the premier’s office for providing technical support to struggling municipalities. However, the province has expressed its dissatisfaction with the progress made in the lead-up to what is expected to be hotly contested local government elections, slated for the first week of November.

To this end, the province’s department of co-operative governance has gone to market to establish a panel that will, over the next year, capacitate officials at the municipalities across the province, including the two metro municipalities, Buffalo City and Nelson Mandela Bay, with financial skills to wean them off their dependence on consultants. “The directorate: municipal development finance & supply chain has identified a gap in the training of municipal officials in the financial spectrum, specifically on supply chain management, revenue and debt management, asset management, internal audit and risk audit,” the request for proposals reads. “This is manifested by the serious negative audit outcomes in municipalities, with only eight municipalities with clean audits and the most qualified audit outcomes on financial management.

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“Having sound financial management in municipalities is essential to maintain effective service delivery to the communities. “The municipal capacity development directorate is intending to launch a large-scale training programme targeting municipal councillors and officials. These training programmes will cover contemporary and compliance topics to assist municipal leadership to engage with the demands.” The tender lists seven key outcomes the province wants to achieve through the process.

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