Durban — In a decisive call to action, Reverend Thulasizwe Buthelezi, the MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) in KwaZulu-Natal, has issued a stern warning to municipalities regarding their over-reliance on external consultants.
During a recent address, Buthelezi emphasised that critical tasks assigned to municipalities should be executed by their own staff, rather than outsourced to consultants. Buthelezi issued the warning at the South African Local Government Association (Salga) meeting on Thursday.
Buthelezi lashed out at municipalities that continue to outsource work and use little money that was allocated to them for service delivery to pay service providers.
Buthelezi said that in 2023, twelve municipalities paid an astonishing R43 million to consultants to do internal audits, even though the municipalities had internal staff that was hired to do the job. Buthelezi said outsourcing that work became a fruitless expenditure because many of those municipalities did not get clean audits. He said instead the municipalities that achieved clean audits in the province were those that did not outsource.
“The little money we have allocated you is not for the service providers but is for strengthening the capacity within the municipalities so stop using consultants with the money allocated to you. It is even worse that none of the municipalities that used consultants for internal audits got an unqualified opinion,” said Buthelezi.
Buthelezi reminded the municipalities that Premier Thami Ntuli issued a decree in his state of the province address that no municipalities should get a disclaimer under his leadership.
In a recent Auditor General report only three municipalities in the province received unqualified audit opinions which King Cetshwayo District Municipality which was previously under Ntuli as the mayor, Ukhahlamba Local Municipality in Bergville under mayor Vikizitha Mlotshwa as well as Umlalazi local municipality under mayor Queen Xulu. Both King Cetshwayo District and Umlalazi municipalities are under the Inkatha Freedom Party.
Ukhahlamba is managed by a coalition of The African People's Movement (APEMO), National Freedom Party (NFP) and the African National Congress (ANC).
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