Financial indiscipline shames �Diamond City�
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday April 3, 2015 12:50
However, the city fathers were caught flatfooted this week by revelations that even as they wait to get P212.6 million in fresh funding in the current financial year, the council’s audit trail is a mess.
For the past five years, the GCC has not had its finances audited. In addition, the local authority still battles to adhere to the statutory period within which it is required to produce its financial statements. With the 2015-2016 financial year having had started yesterday, questions are being asked on whether taxpayers funds – amounting to P212.6 million this year – should continue being thrown into a system that cannot account for funds.
The planned mutiny by ratepayers in Phase 4 has also heightened citizen awareness and raised the spectre of civil disobedience. Phase 4 residents say they do not understand why they should continue to pay rates to the GCC when it is failing to provide services. The council has had a hard start to the year, but city fathers are determined to change the legacy of their predecessors and restore lost trust. The trust has been eroded by an Auditor General report indicating rampant mismanagement and laissez faire approach by city officials charged with providing financial statements for audit.
Nominated councillor, Kagiso Ntime said city fathers are very concerned about the way council is handling its finances, particularly when it cannot account for how money has been used.
“As the council, we should be accountable to people,” he said.
“We expect council officials to cooperate with the Auditor General by giving him all the information that he requests. Failure to provide necessary information shows that the officials are hiding something.” He said council should stick to the statutory requirement to provide its financial statements to the Auditor General within a period of three months after the end of a financial year.
“I am surprised the council has not been doing that. The Auditor General kept on extending time and this was even mentioned on the 2010 audit report. We have long requested for other financial year reports, but we had not been given a single copy.
“The only explanation we received was that the council had been audited up to 2013, but reports were still awaited from the Auditor General. We did not agree with this explanation especially after reading what the Auditor General said in his last audit report.”
Ntime said he believes the council is in a mess particularly since concerns raised in the previous full council meeting on the matter were conveniently not captured in the official records.
Another councillor, Oarabile Motlaleng, who chairs the Audit Committee, said the local authority’s failure to submit timely financial statements shows irresponsibility.
“We are doing our best to rectify things and see how council can be helped. One of the things that councillors and council officials had agreed on is that all records should be kept safely and updated.
We hope our committee will assist where possible,” Motlaleng said.
Meanwhile, Gaborone mayor, Kagiso Thutlwe said as the new leadership of the local authority, they are concerned that the council has not published audited results for years.
“Things should not happen like that. Our belief is that things should be done in the right manner. Our aim is to cooperate and work as a team together with the Town Clerk’s office to check where the problems could be.
“It should be understood that the Town Clerk is also new and he is taking full responsibility as a leader to correct things,” Thutlwe said.
The youthful mayor said the public should be assured that things will go back to normal at GCC. “We want Gaborone to be a diamond city and bring services to the people. Things should be done in a proper manner.”