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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Government has targeted urban local authorities with serious arrears in audit reports in a clampdown meant to promote accountability and financial discipline in councils.

The Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Ministry is set to take tougher action and hold councillors accountable for the process as 20 councils were not up to date in terms of audits.

This comes after residents in some local authorities challenged councillors to undertake forensic audits of the previous councils’ books amid fears that councils may have been prejudiced of millions of dollars through dubious land deals.

Mutare residents recently took Mutare City Council to the High Court over its alleged failure to audit its financial books for the last five years.

In an interview at the Local Government Investment Conference held in Bulawayo last week, principal director urban local authorities Ms Erica Jones said councillors will be held accountable for failure to produce audit reports by their councils.

“We have a number of councils that are in serious arrears in their auditing process. The worst council was last audited in 2012.

“So we are starting to enforce the law in this process. We have been doing it by saying you are not audited up to date, can you get yourself audited up to date. It has not really worked,” she said.

“The minister is going to take tougher action and hold councillors accountable for the process.

“At the moment 12 of the 32 urban local authorities are audited up to date and it is not acceptable. That is less than half.

“We have been monitoring them, we have eight in the red zone, which were audited more than two years ago, and then we have the orange zone and the green zone.”

She said the list of positions for audited accounts will be made public so that people start demanding.

Ms Jones said auditing was not a cheap action, but it is more expensive not to audit because councils may be suffering from leakages.

“I am sure you are aware of the fact that councils who do not adhere to the Urban Councils Act can be found guilty of gross misconduct. That is obviously not the route we want to go, but we want to sit down with the councils and find out what their problem is in getting audited up to date and work out a plan to get audited up to date.”

“You cannot take councillors who have just come into office and say that right we are firing you because you were not audited. That would not be proper.

“So, what we want to do is to say you are three or five years behind, what is your plan to get audited up to date and then literally sign an agreement,” he said.

He said the agreement would be if they do not perform, councillors will face the consequences.