08 Oct 2017

Sub councils require insight on resource management given that they operate key financial infrastructures and provide essential services to various communities.

Mahalapye Sub-council chairperson, Mr Tassman Cebani said this when officially opening a two-day Central District Council internal audit committee capacity building workshop in Mahalapye on October 5.

The purpose of the workshop was to build capacity in order to enable audit committees to carry out their mandate with due diligence.

Mr Cebani also said it would act as a bridging stone in closing the gaps that existed in the knowledge of audit processes.

He said audit committees played an important role in the sub councils.

Mr Cebani said it was the duty of the audit committee to ensure that operation processes and practices were followed and be able to provide direction where there were short comings.

He appealed to sub audit committees that the Central District Council heavily relied on them to deliver on its mandate, hence it was important that they carried out their duties as envisaged.

Outlining the benefits of internal audit in an organisation, Tonota assistant council secretary, Mr Motshwariemang Matseka said the value of an internal audit was becoming critical to strong corporate governance, risk management, effective internal control and efficient operations of any organisation.

Mr Matseka said the purpose of audit was not fault finding but to make recommendations for corrective action which would ultimately lead to prevention of mismanagement and loss of revenues of the entity.

He noted that there were three main ways on how an internal audit worked to help an organisation and those were assurance, insight and objectivity.

Mr Matseka said internal audit assisted an organisation in obtaining assurance on the organisation’s governance, risk management and control processes to help it achieve its strategic, operational, financial and compliance objectives.

He said management and governing bodies might rely on an internal audit to evaluate how the organisation was operating and if policies and procedures were being followed.

He said due to the responsibility to analyse a vast span of activities across the organisation and gain in-depth understanding, internal auditors were often uniquely suited to provide advice to management on how issues in one department would affect one another.  

He explained that an internal audit could offer management team an objective source of independent advice.

Central District Council chief internal auditor, Mr Godiramang Koontse said the objectives of the workshops were to take new members on board and help them appreciate how the committee operated.

Mr Koontse said Central District Council complied with the requirements of Local Government Act, which stated that there should be elections after every two and a half years to elect new committees hence new members who needed to be taken on board. ENDS