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.
Meanwhile, the ANC chairman Mashatile will deliver a key note address at the rally scheduled for June 4, at FNB Stadium reports Sydney Morweng, news editor.
Opposition parties believe the African National Congress is losing ground in Gauteng and some have said that the party’s upcoming Gauteng rally will be an important litmus test.
Gauteng Premier david Makhura believes the African National Congress is on the right track.
“In Johannesburg, in Johannesburg South, the volunteers were addressing, as part of building up this morale, and the spirit,” said Makhura on the campaign trail this weekend.
The African National Congress said it intended to ensure that the FNB Stadium was full during the upcoming rally, and Makhura believes that will merely be the beginning of things to come, as the election season shifts into second gear next month.
“I am certain that by the time we get to the rally, the ANC campaign in Gauteng would have reached the right level, because from the rally, we will be working flat out every day, every hour, in every part of this province,” added Makhura.
“We have concluded our processes which often divide a lot of our members.
Now, we are focusing on the campaign and you will see the first message we are sending, that FNB stadium will be full.
Where we have made mistakes…we, ourselves, would like to work with the people of our province and our cities to fix those problems,” he said
