North West Finance MEC Motlalepula Rosho has commended the provincial departments for their dedication and determination to change the audit affairs of the province from worse to better.

This follows the departments’ audit outcomes improved from five unqualified opinions during 2018/19 financial year to eight unqualified opinions during the 2019/20 financial year.

Rosho said government is expected to deliver quality and sustainable services that a society requires to maintain and improve its welfare.

“In order to realise this, it is important to ensure there is compliance and accountability to the systems that are put in place to administer the business of government by officials. Officials must embrace the capacity building initiatives that are provided by government, as this will improve their skills to match the demands of business in today’s world.

“The improvement is an indication that the province will improve in its mandate of delivering required services to its communities and that service delivery protests will lessen. The work done by provincial treasury in providing mentoring and support to the departments gave a different picture to the audit opinion of the province,” Rosho said.

Rosho also announced that due to the hard work that has been put in by the departments, there is confidence that in future, more departments can achieve clean audits.

“Four departments together with the North West Provincial Legislature were identified for clean audit and are currently undergoing 100% verification of all procurement documentation to identify gaps that could be corrected by management.

“During this process, capacity building and training were provided continuously in the form of virtual workshops, telephonic support, reviewing of interim and annual financial statements by the Office of the Provincial Accountant General and Provincial Internal Audit for combined assurance. This was done with the aim of improving the quality of financial statements submitted to the Auditor General of South Africa,” Rosho said. – SAnews.gov.za