Thank you, House Chair. Minister, the amendment of the Public Audit Act provides the Auditor- General with more powers to ensure accountability. The question to you, Minister, is that, what is your department doing in making sure that all the entities that report within your portfolio support the Auditor- General in this regard?
The MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS: Thank you. Let me start by saying yes, there are problems in the department, for instance, let's start with the Department of Co-operative Governance and
Traditional Affairs. There are problems there but we are dealing with them.
Obviously, when the Auditor-General has a disclaimer in the department, for instance, may end up issuing a certificate debts somewhere if he feels that something was done wrongly by an individual or accounting individual, obviously, we will support him.
But the audit committee and other entities are working and we are also developing a plan. We have a plan to make sure we address some of the issues that the Auditor- General has been raising in his audit, for instance, there are lots of things that the Auditor-General has raised. But in Traditional Affairs, they got a clean audit. The Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent, Misa, got a clean audit. But where there are issues, we are addressing them so that, firstly, we improve. But also, the officials themselves need to make sure that they don't end up with a certificate of debts from the Auditor-General. We are doing our best but we are starting from a very low base of a disclaimer, not one year but a number of years. Thank you.
Question 307:
The MINISTER OF CO-OPERATIVE GOVERNANCE AND TRADITIONAL
AFFAIRS: Chairperson, the amalgamation of Ventersdorp and Tlokwe local municipalities which resulted in the formation of the JB Marks Local Municipality in 2016, I would frankly say that it hasn't achieved all its intended results. If we judge it by the rate of community protests relating to service delivery, I would say it hasn't. But there have been some improvements. It is not all gloom and doom. There have been some improvements in service delivery at a very slow pace. For, example, the municipality managed to stabilise electricity network in Ventersdorp. More households have been connected to the grids than before the merge and they have been able to buy more equipments and yellow fleets and deployed them in Ventersdorp to fast-track service delivery.
However, in recent times there have been community protests that took place in Ventersdorp on matters relating to service delivery again. As a result the premier of the province has established a technical task team comprising officials from provincial government and from the municipality to address the concerns. We were
also been in formed that the task team meets on a monthly basis with the communities of Ventersdorp to address the challenges. We also know that the municipality is finalising a master plan to address service delivery backlogs and to promote more development in the area to stimulate economic growth. Thank you.