Third Special Report

Third special report on the financial management of government’s covid-19 initiatives 52 Recommendation We encouragemunicipalities, during the project planning phase, to identify any factors that could lead to delays and impede the project progress, and to continuously monitor the project during implementation to ensure that these factors are timeously addressed. Where there is a likelihood that the factors will contribute to a delay, measures should be implemented to address the issues. Municipalities should implement accepted project management principles for infrastructure work to ensure that the work is adequately managed andmonitoredwithin the project management elements of time, cost and quality. Municipalities should perform regular inspections and draft monitoring reports to hold service providers accountable for completing projects in a timely manner. This will also assist in the early identification of poorly performing service providers. Contractors’ progress must be regularly monitored and reviewed to ensure that project delivery occurs on time. We encouragemunicipalities to conduct detailed inspections to assess the quality of the installations and to address all project defects and delays promptly within a strict timeline. We further encouragemunicipalities to investigate the conduct of consultants or contractors and take appropriate action (including to recover funds) where work was not performed according to the required expectations in terms of the project plan. Municipalities should investigate the actions of municipal officials who have failed to ensure that the projects meet the required quality standards and timelines, and to implement consequencemanagement where appropriate. Inadequate provision of water and sanitation facilities provided by municipalities to shelters Municipalities were facedwithmany challenges arising from the outbreak of covid-19, including providing accommodation for the homeless to address the service delivery needs of themost vulnerable citizens and curb the spread of covid-19. We identified that three of the 12 sites audited did not have adequate water and sanitation facilities at the shelters. At one municipality, we noted that no water, sanitation and electricity was provided to the temporary structures erected, while at another we noted that there were insufficient sanitary fixtures provided to the shelters. Manzengwenya KwaSonto project: 5kl tanks were placed in existing structure and 30kl tankwas not in place.