Deputy Chair, I want to recognise the concern about the state of the financial crisis in our municipalities, which was raised by the hon member representing the ACDP. I agree with him; all of us must be very concerned about this matter.
I want to assure him that work has been done to assist these municipalities. To begin with, audit committees have been put in place in all the municipalities - this has been done by the Department of Co- operative Governance - and it has laid the basis for the work that needs to be done.
Following this, we hope that all the municipalities will provide the necessary oversight over these audit committees. We, ourselves, need to support and train those councillors to ensure that there is proper oversight.
We share the concern of the ACDP and we are working on this. Deputy Chair, this is one of the reasons why we have prioritised the Public Administration Management Bill for consideration in Parliament this year. Through this Bill we will be ensuring that there are standards, norms and values across all three spheres of government.
The Bill will be in Parliament and I hope that it will receive the overwhelming support of everybody here for precisely the reason that the ACDP has pointed out. We cannot continue to have such terrible audit results coming out of our municipalities.