Joburg mayor says looting of state resources is ‘staggering’
City of Joburg executive mayor, Herman Mashaba says he aims to recover money ‘stolen’ by the blatant looting of state resources during the previous ANC administration.
On Thursday (26 January), the City of Johannesburg tabled its Integrated Annual Report for the 2015/16 financial year – a reflection of how the city used its R52.6 billion budget to serve more than 4.6 million people.
It included a report by the Auditor-General which Mashaba said confirmed the rampant maladministration witnessed under the previous ANC-led government.
The City’s audit outcomes for 2015/16 showed an overall regression compared to the previous financial year. During 2014/15, six out of twelve city entities had a clean audit outcome ,while only four entities achieved this outcome in the 2015/16 financial year.
In an interview with Talk 702 on Friday morning, Mashaba called the numbers ‘staggering’.
“We are regressing as a city, the situation is getting worse every year,” he said. “The corruption in the city of Johannesburg was no longer corruption, it was blatant looting of state resources.”
In the current reporting period, the total balance for fruitless and wasteful expenditure extended beyond R26 million, with R7.4 million being incurred in the 2015/16 reporting period.
“Under the previous administration, a shocking lack of attention to financial management practices resulted in a failure to adequately investigate cases of unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure
“This left the City’s Council unable to assess whether or not the identified expenditure could effectively be recovered. This also means that individuals implicated are yet to face investigation and possible criminal charges,” Mashaba said.
He pointed out that 79.72% of the total balance of fruitless and wasteful expenditure disclosed in the annual financial statement is yet to be investigated.
Similarly, the total balance for unauthorised expenditure was more than R3.4 billion with R692.6 million being incurred in 2015/16.
Mashaba said that 69% of this irregular expenditure was only identified during the audit process and not detected by the City’s monitoring processes.
“This points to flaws in the City’s monitoring processes that perpetuated a culture of corruption and secrecy,” he said.
The ANC denied that instances of irregular expenditure was as a result of corruption, but rather, was due to non-compliance.
Mashaba conceded that in some instances, the former administration did not follow the correct procedure; however, he said he is currently working on many cases where blatant corruption is involved.
“I am not going to tolerate people who abuse public funds,” Mashaba said, adding that he will put every resource available to ensure the recovery of ‘stolen’ money.
“This money was stolen, and blatantly stolen for that matter,” Mashaba said. “We will ensure that we correct it.”
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