“Just do your jobs.” That's the call from political analyst Ebrahim Fakir‚ who on Tuesday chastised public representatives for doing everything else but their jobs. Fakir‚ speaking at a SA Local Government Association (Salga) conference on how to deepen democratic participation at a local level‚ said public representatives‚ politicians and government officials appeared to have too much time on their hands. He said the number of politicians taking up university courses when there was so much service delivery backlog begged the questions: ‘Where do they find the time?”He argued that officials needed to possess the skills to do the jobs for which they were employed anyway. “Far too many local politicians are doing many other things than what they should be doing. The answer to all these challenges is simply: “Do your jobs”. Political analyst Dr Somadoda Fikeni‚ speaking at the same conference‚ said the government and its officials were guilty of prioritising favourable audit outcomes over actual performance and service delivery.Fikeni said concerted march towards clean audits was being achieved increasingly at the expense of government performance. He argued that the nature of punitive measures against officials was such that performance was taking a backseat to clean audits‚ when there should be a balance between the two.The situation was exacerbated by departments that were growing increasingly nonchalant about returning large sums of money back to National Treasury while they trumpeted their audit achievements. “We’ve started confusing conformity and compliance with performance. You’ll hear certain politicians and departments bragging that they got a clean audit but no taps were delivered. Compliance is fast overtaking performance. There is no consciousness between what we do as leaders and the impact on the ground‚” said Fikeni. “It’s the harmony between the two [that matters]‚ not either or. We’ve made compliance very complex. It’s turned into an industry and businesses are cashing in.” Fikeni’s criticism comes as Minister of Sports Fikile Mbalula yesterday lauded officials in his department for notching up a third consecutive clean audit award. The award was presented to the department by the Auditor General in Pretoria. “This is a third Clean Audit report for the department. It is hard to get a clean audit report‚ it is even harder to retain it and easy to backtrack. Its efforts from the Director General to the Chief Financial Officer and to all officials of the department who continue to do their work with diligence. This is a report on how the department accounts for public funds. It is a report to the people of South Africa who hold us accountable for every cent we spend in making their lives better‚” said Mbalula in a statement. Fakir said: “It is important to have compliance because it imposes an obligation to be accountable and it further imposes an obligation to be transparent‚” he said. - TMG Digital/The Times..