The Minister for Provincial and Local Government:

Letter from the Minister for Provincial and Local Government, tabled in terms of section 65(2)(a) of the Public Finance Management Act, 1999 (Act No 1 of 1999), explaining the reasons for the late tabling of the following annual reports:

1. Annual Report of the Department of Provincial and Local Government:
The annual report of the Department of Provincial and Local Government was tabled on 15 October 2002. The report was completed by the Department and handed over to the contractors for layout and printing on 4 September 2002. The printing was completed and the report delivered to the Government Printers on 23 September 2002. The report was therefore completed and available for tabling. Unfortunately, due to a purely administrative fault, the report was only formally tabled on 15 October 2002. The Chief Financial Officer, Mr C A Clerihew takes responsibility for this lack of communication.

2. Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit:
The annual report of the Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit (MIIU) was prepared within 3 months of the end of its current 28 February 2002 financial year. It was formally handed over on 8 May 2002. This was the first annual report prepared following the listing of the MIIU as a public entity in terms of the Public Finance Management Act, 1999. The MIIU also provided the final draft report to the Portfolio Committee on Local Government at the annual budget hearings. The annual report was not, however, tabled in Parliament and this is being addressed. The Chief Financial Officer, Mr C A Clerihew, takes responsibility for not ensuring that the necessary actions were taken timeously.

I would like to state that these delays were not due to the inability to prepare the reports, but rather administrative processes. The assurance is given that additional control measures have been introduced to ensure that this unfortunate occurence does not happen again.

3. Municipal Demarcation Board:
In respect of the annual report of the Municipal Demarcation Board, the reasons for non-compliance were obtained from the Manager of the Board, Mr H R Monare.

3.1 The Audit was carried out and completed on time, and the Auditor-General duly signed off the Financial Statements on 19 July 2002, as he found the Board fully prepared for the audit.

3.2 The preparation of the text for the Annual Report was started early in the year, and was actually complete by the time the Auditor-General signed off the Financial Statements.

3.3 However, there were serious inefficiencies in the design, selection and securing of photographs, proof reading and ultimate pulling together and printing of the report itself.

3.4 The main reasons for the inefficiencies in this regard are as follows:
- In an environment such as the Board's, where on the one hand staff numbers are minimal, and on the other, duties are numerous and diverse, logistical co-ordination in the administration, and the way information moves from one cluster/department to another, needs to work perfectly, in order to make the most of the available human resources.
- In the above regard, the Manager of the Municipal Demarcation Board has put in place processes, to regularise internal tasks such as the compilation of an annual report. But this regularisation of tasks has not yet been fully perfected, and co-ordination to ensure that all tasks get carried out by minimal staff at the same time, sometimes fails, and timeframes are compromised, as has happened in this case.

3.5 The Manager of the Municipal Demarcation Board takes full responsibility for failure to comply with the law in this regard, and undertakes to ensure that this never happens again in future.

F S MUFAMADI

MINISTER FOR PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT