The Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Council, in the financial year 2012/13 collectively spent more than R 800 million of taxpayer’s money on irregular, unauthorized, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
In comparison Cape Town for the same period only expended R 1, 5m on irregular, unauthorized, fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Only 22 of the 319 municipalities managed to get a clean audit with the balance all being qualified. Two Hundred and Sixty one (261) of the 319 Municipalities employed consultants to ensure that their audit would be clean and paid R 695m to consultants and still got a qualified audit.
No municipality in the Freestate, Eastern Cape, Northwest and Limpopo received a clean audit report from the Auditor General.
An amazing R11,6bn was irregularly spent nationally of which R 3,6bn couldn’t be accounted for and no substantiating documents provided to justify the expense.
Johannesburg had R 152,2m, Ekurhuleni R 105,8m, and Tshwane R 627.2m of irregular unauthorized, wasteful and fruitless expenditure in the financial year.
Amazingly R 62bn (23.13%) has been paid out to municipal workers in salaries from a consolidated expense account of R 268bn, and with all that money spent the various councils still qualified in their financial reports for the ensuing year.