Johannesburg — CO-OPERATIVE Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Sicelo Shiceka has promised to help municipalities achieve clean financial audit reports by 2014.

Shiceka told Business Day yesterday he had assigned officials to draw up a plan to achieve this goal.

"We will be looking at the pockets of excellence in relation to best practice that are there and use those people as part of our capacity," said Shiceka.

He could not provide details as the process of drawing up the plan was still in its infancy.

Most municipalities have failed to account for funds spent, and have been warned by auditor- general Terence Nombembe to fix their finances. Audit reports on municipalities' 2006-07 financial statements, released late last year, showed that both rural and urbanised provinces performed badly. In the Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces, only one out of 40 municipalities received an unqualified audit opinion.

About 30 received adverse and disclaimer opinions, while nine received qualified opinions.

Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal municipalities are in a similar position, as there was very little improvement on previous periods in the management of funds in either province.

In KwaZulu-Natal, out of 54 audited municipalities, only 17 received an unqualified audit opinion. In Gauteng, only five out of 14 municipalities received an unqualified audit opinion. Out of the five, only one had a clean report without any concerns.

Shiceka had spoken to Nombembe about the plan to improve the financial health of municipalities and the auditor-general had agreed that 2014 was a reasonable time by which to achieve this goal.

Shiceka wants to save resources by halting the outsourcing of services that could be performed by municipal employees. He said he was considering making all municipalities own earthmoving machinery and other construction equipment to enable them to fix roads on their own.

This would ensure that municipalities did not rely only on black economic empowerment companies, which were sometimes expensive. It would also increase municipal job opportunities, he said.

Other services such as waste management should be handed to co-operatives. "Waste management must be done by co-operatives rather than giving work to individuals who want to enrich themselves."

Shiceka threatened to fire non-performing councillors and officials in his department. "We will be looking at performance management systems from the president, to the ministers, councillors, premiers, MECs. All public officials will be monitored through performance management systems. Any person who is lazy, who is incompetent -- they must actually leave."

During the election campaign President Jacob Zuma promised residents that he would fire lazy public officials. The African National Congress Youth League went further, saying even Zuma himself would be recalled if he did not deliver as expected.

Shiceka said the main areas of concern for him were the Eastern Cape, North West, Northern Cape and Mpumalanga.