The Siyanda District Municipality for the financial year of 2010/2011 achieved for the first time in its history an unqualified opinion. An opinion is said to be unqualified when the Auditor General concludes that the Financial Statements give a true and fair view in accordance with the financial reporting framework used for the preparation and presentation of the financial Statements. An unqualified opinion is regarded as a “clean bill of health” to a patient.
During the 2009/2010 financial year the district municipality received a qualified audit opinion and as such the current state of affairs is a huge improvement from the previous financial year.
As the Accounting Officer of the District Municipality I wish to thank the staff of Siyanda for all the hard work they put in to ensure that we receive a better audit outcome. For five consecutive years the municipality received disclaimers, which meant that the Auditor General could not express an opinion. The staff of Siyanda put in a lot of effort, time and energy to ensure that the audit recovery plan is fully implemented and without their hard work this would not have been possible.
I wish to further thank the Council of the District Municipality for the political guidance and support they have given us. As the administration it is imperative that we thank the Council for the believe they had in us in achieving this milestone.
I would be failing in my duty if I did not thank the Community of the Siyanda District for their patience with us. We made a commitment in the form of our Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plan which is seen as a contract between the Administration, Council and the Community expressing the goals and objectives that we intend to achieve during a specific year.
It took us a while, but we have gradually improved our position and we want to thank all the role-players for believing in our ability to achieve the impossible. The responsibility is placed squarely on our shoulders to reach a clean audit and we can only achieve it with everyone’s involvement.
Once again we have proven that Siyanda is growing, as the name suggests.
