The North West Provincial Legislature Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) has decried the state of the Municipal Public Accounts Committees (MPAC) in four of the five local municipalities within the Bojanala Platinum District Municipality in the province.
This comes as the Provincial Legislature has embarked on an oversight week in various municipalities within the district aimed at strengthening oversight, public participation, and promoting accountability and transparency in government.
The committee has already engaged Moretele, Madibeng, Kgetlengrivier, and Moses Kotane Local Municipalities within the District, and hopes to conclude the visit by meeting with the Rustenburg Local Municipality and Bojanala Platinum District Municipality on Thursday.
Speaking on YOU FM Newshour, SCOPA’s Provincial Chairperson Smuts Matshe said that one of the major responsibilities of a legislature is to play oversight over the executive.
“Since being elected we have already conducted a similar oversight in Dr. Kenneth Kaunda District, Dr. Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District and now this quarter we are here in Bojanala Platinum District.
“So, it’s about coming to test the health of our democracy because when you’re in a democracy all the time you must check on whether this democracy is healthy.
“So, all the portfolio committees of the legislature are here in the district,” said Matshe.
In addition, Matshe said the committee wanted to establish if municipalities have functional MPAC and systems to respond to the Auditor General’s findings.
“We have a program to interact with the senior municipal leaders both political and administrative to identify as to whether they have systems to ensure that the post audit action plans are implemented.
You will appreciate that every year the Auditor General performs those audits and makes findings and out of the findings the expectation is that there will be that action plan to correct the things that would have been picked up by the AG.
Secondly, we wanted to check if this structure called the MPAC are functioning, because if they are not functioning, they’re going to weaken governance in a municipality,” Matshe explained.
The SCOPA Chairperson did not mince his words regarding the functionality of the MPAC structures.
“Firstly, the MPACs don’t appear to be respected by the councillors that we have visited.
“They’re taken as by the way kind of a structure and the authority of the MPAC is being undermined. But we’re also worried that the capacity of some of the MPACs is a cause for concern.
“The fact that they don’t have the capacity to investigate and to do research, it’s something that we’ve said should be attended to, including the fact that they’re records are not kept safe,” remarked Matshe.
“Furthermore, Matshe said most of the municipalities visited were found to have weak to completely dysfunctional systems to deal with the AG’s findings.
“He however applauded them for availing themselves for the sessions, for them to “understand their challenges and how they can assist them in correcting them.”
The oversight visits will continue Thursday in Rustenburg.
