Inanda's Namibia Stop 8 housing project, eThekwini, was launched in 2019, but this is the only RDP housing completed to date. Photo credit: Tsoanelo Sefoloko
Twelve years and R120-million have passed since eThekwini Urban Council launched a project to provide 343 homes at Stop 8 in Inanda, but only three homes have yet been built.
Two of the units are two-story and have serious quality defects, including uneven brickwork in the stairs, inefficient bathroom and kitchen drainage, and substandard ceiling panels.
The third one-story house, built for a disabled recipient, does not have a ramp, is not modified to suit the owner's needs, and is equipped with a standard bathroom. I did.
These shocking failures in service delivery by the City were highlighted by the South African Auditor General in Parliament on Tuesday in his briefing on the findings of the 2022-2023 eThekwini audit to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa). .
The project is one of several selected by the Comptroller General for a study to assess the impact of the city's failure to comply with supply chain management and other regulations on its ability to provide services. there were.
According to the Auditor General's report, the Stop 8 project was initially delayed due to the slow pace of land acquisition for development. As a result, 15 variant orders totaled R7.84 million, increasing the cost of the project by R143 million.
The Auditor General found that there was inefficient project management, resulting in significant cost increases and a lack of due consideration by the project team to ensure the quality of work and compliance with specifications for disabled occupants. It was recognized that
“Quality inspections by the project team (municipality, consultants and contractors) were not effective and various quality deficiencies were discovered by the audit team during on-site inspections,” the report said.
Not only did costs increase by about R143 million, but the delays caused dissatisfied residents and the destruction of already built homes.
The Auditor General recommended that eThekwini streamline the planning process and develop standard procedures to track and monitor housing deliveries. It also suggested the city improve its quality control procedures to ensure defects are identified and repaired during construction to ensure that the homes ultimately produced meet standards.
Earlier this year, the ANC sacked Mayor Mxolisi Kaunda over service delivery failures and replaced him with Cyril Shaba as part of a series of interventions in the city. President Cyril Ramaphosa also appointed an intervention team to work with the city to address the water crisis, and the provincial government also placed eThekwini under section 154 control.
They have been battling eThekwini's inability to provide water to residents, the collapse of the city's sanitation system after the 2022 floods, corruption in the city administration, and backlash from the ANC's eThekwini region.
The auditor general said the city is “very stable” and has a “well-funded and well-resourced office,” but financial management has regressed and city leadership has consistently failed over the years. It said it had not acted on recommendations from the annual audit.
Key supply chain management positions remained unfilled, while the city consistently failed to monitor or challenge employees and city council members who do business with the city.
The city took more than 105 days to collect and 56 days to pay, well below the standard 30-day time it takes to collect revenue and pay creditors.
Only 3.9% of the budget was allocated to infrastructure maintenance and repairs, which was “significantly below” the standard of 8%, which, combined with illegal connections, resulted in the loss of 58% of eThekwini's water.
The city had accumulated R2.4 billion in irregular expenditures in 2022-2023, much of it due to poor supply chain management and non-compliance with regulations regarding the local content of procured services. .
The Auditor General said eThekwini had “remained stagnant” due to “repeated non-compliance with laws relating to the environment, expenditure, results, procurement and contract management”.
The unqualified audit provided findings regarding compliance with stated objectives and regulations, finding that spend management, results management, procurement and contract management, and environmental management had all deteriorated.
Supply chain management personnel participated in processes related to contracts in which family members, partners or associates had an interest but did not disclose these, while procurements in excess of R200,000 invited competitive tenders It was done without any effort.
Despite the independent investigator's recommendations, the City did not initiate any disciplinary proceedings or criminal proceedings against the senior management or employees for whom the independent investigator demonstrated financial misconduct.
This is part of a pattern of repeated non-compliance by city management, which for years has failed to take the actions recommended by the Comptroller General and has failed to respond to municipal leadership's efforts to address non-compliance. slow”.
“Similar incidents of non-compliance had been identified during previous audits. We believe the primary cause of these issues is internal control weaknesses, which perpetuate the recurrence of non-compliance.” says the report.
The report recommends that the city conduct regular reviews of its sewer network and develop plans to address deficiencies, while ensuring that adequate capital and operating budgets are passed to support the plan, which falls within Treasury standards. He recommended that.
The paper called on city management to “transform the city's culture toward compliance with laws and regulations and set the tone at the top.”
The Auditor General called on Scopa to strengthen its oversight of the city's implementation of impact management and corrective measures, infrastructure management and planning, and implementation of audit action plans.
The commission is seeking to use its authority to request a report on the process for addressing major projects, particularly weaknesses in project management and the city's supply chain management measures identified in previous audits.
Scopa plans to conduct a monitoring visit in eThekwini at the end of November.
