North West Premier Lazarus Mokgosi has welcomed the 2024/25 audit outcomes which he says have demonstrated consistent and improved performance of the provincial departments.
The premier accompanied by the Speaker of the Provincial Legislature, Dr. Desbo Mohono, her deputy Collen Maine, as well as the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Smuts Matshe, led an engagement session with the Auditor General, Tsakani Maluleke in Klerksdorp on Monday.
Speaking on YOUFM Newshour, the Mokgosi’ spokesperson The Premier’ spokesperson Sello Tatai, who was speaking on YOUFM Newshour, said Mokgosi has maintained that the performance mirrors government’s ongoing efforts of building a capable, ethical, and developmental state as per the dictates of Priority Three of the Medium-Term Development Plan (2024-2029).
“It has been a long time coming. The Premier has been steadfast on seeing to it that the provincial government departments improve their audit outcomes. He has through various structures of government, particularly the provincial treasury, working in collaboration with the Auditor-General, have been hard at work to ensure there’s progress in relation to how government conduct its business. This particularly how departments spend the money allocated to them when one look at the provision of services and adhering to the dictates of the auditor general of South Africa,” said Tatai.
Tatai has also ascribed the achievement to adherence to guidelines and protocols set by the national government’s intervention in May 2018 due to governance challenges, corruption, and a lack of service delivery.
“The transition that the government has been able to implement following Section 100 continues to demonstrate that there is serious adherence to how the province is conducting its business and how departments are spending money.This also include the implementation of consequence management in instance where there’s suspicious of maladministration, corruption and malfeasance,” explained the spokesperson.
In the latest audit cycle which ended March 31, 2025, a total of eight out of twelve departments received unqualified audit reports with the Treasury and the Department of Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation receiving clean audits, while two other departments, Education and Health received qualified audit outcomes.
“The regression of the Department of Health from unqualified to qualified audit opinion and the failure by the Department of Education to improve to unqualified outcome for two consecutive financial years compels the government to double its efforts in ensuring that the two departments get out of the woods,” expanded Tatai.
In addition, Tatai said new measures will be implemented to ensure that the departments improve going forward. “These are the two important departments with the lion’s share of the provincial budget with the constitutional mandate of ensuring that our people receive uninterrupted provision of services in our hospitals, community health care centres, primary and secondary schools. So new techniques will be implored in enhancing accountability and transparency to ensure that they improve their audit outcomes,” said Tatai.
Government also indicated that much improvement has been recorded in addressing service delivery challenges throughout the province.
