By Lungile Ntimba
There has been a steady increase in the number of department and state entities in Gauteng achieving clean audits over the past three years.
They were acknowledged by Premier Panyaza Lesufi at the Gauteng Clean Audit Awards on Sunday.
A total of 14 entities and six provincial departments received clean audits, while seven departments and four entities received unqualified audit opinions for the 2023/24 financial year.
The community safety department improved from an unqualified audit to a clean audit.
Lesufi noted that the seven departments remained stagnant.
“We need to encourage them to work hard to get the clean audit. We also need to pay our service providers within 30 days and support the departments that are struggling,” he told the gathering.
Lesufi said he was proud that there was no department that got a disclaimer or unqualified audit opinion.
He emphasised that the government was committed to maintaining the clean audits, while improving the audit outcomes of the other departments and entities.
“We will intensify internal controls to ensure that we do not regress,” said Lesufi.
He added that the provincial government was also working on strengthening the forensic unit in the office of the premier and would create a mini forfeiture unit to deal with all the small cases instead of taking them to Special Investigating Unit.
SIU head Andy Mothibi said that the team was looking at awareness, education and lifestyle audits as part of preventing corruption.
He said 19 accounting officer level lifestyle audits had been conducted, including CEOs and HODs.
“We have concluded this process and the report has been presented to the premier. We found that 37% of the audited accounting officers were high risks or they failed the test.
“Sixteen (16 %) were found to be medium risk while 47 % were low risk. We require that action must be taken against those that failed,” said Mothibi.
The entities that received unqualified audit opinions were the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller, G-Fleet Management, the Medical Supplies Administration System and the Gauteng Partnership Fund.
Lesufi singled out the G-Fleet for starting with a disclaimer to qualified, but in the last two years achieved a clean audit.
He said that this demonstrated that it was “doable” to improve audit outcomes.
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