25 Mar 2014

The approved budget for Gaborone City Council (GCC) for 2014/15 financial year stands at P303.7 million, says the mayor, Mr Haskins Nkaigwa.

Speaking during a full meeting of the Gaborone City Council on Monday, March 24, Mr Nkaigwa said that this represented a slight growth of 19.6 per cent from the 2013/14 financial year which was P253.9 million.

He noted that the city council’s emphasis in the year 2014 would be on maintenance of facilities including staff housing, school infrastructure, street lighting, traffic lights as well as roads and allied roads furniture.

Mr Nkaigwa said GCC would also be spending a significant amount on the relief of destitute persons, waste management, maintenance of council fleet as well as procurement of fire trucks and equipment.

Despite the minimal improvements in the budget, he said, the failure by government to compensate the council P30 million used for payment of Industrial class employees who were transferred to the new scheme of permanent and pensionable has put council in a difficult financial position.

This, he said, has compromised all GCC service delivery standards, stating that some programmes and projects which were planned to be undertaken in 2014/15 financial year were put on hold or deferred to the next financial year.

Mr Nkaigwa reiterated that these acts by the government compromised GCC’s ability to deliver its mandate.

He indicated that with regard to rates revenue collection GCC’s opening balance at the beginning of 2013/14 financial year was P49.8 million and arrears by the end of February 2014 stood at P10.3 million.

This, he said, indicated that council managed to collect a total of P39.5 million during the same financial year, noting that P34.6 million was collected in-house while the remaining P4.8 million was collected through partnerships with Barclays Bank and First National Bank.

He said it must be noted however that the consultant was on site to produce rates billing for the current financial year and were expected to be completed by April 2014.

The main challenges that hindered council rates collection was that customers had the tendency to fail to update their records after change of plot ownership as well as contact address, saying this made it difficult to trace them.

The mayor observed that it has been realised that the public was not aware of the importance of paying rates.

Mr Nkaigwa said the council put in place strategies to resolve the challenge and have engaged two private attorneys to collect the arrears on the council’s behalf.

The two attorneys were handling 130 plots amounting to P2.2 million. At end of February 2014, the attorneys had collected P858, 103.52.

he council would also continue to conduct house to house campaigns, issuing demand letters and sensitising the public about the importance of paying rates. Ends