29 Sep 2014

Sowa Town mayor, Mr Moagisi Lekwapa has said the local authority has for the past five years failed to deliver according to expectation.

This, he said, was a result of the 2008 to 2009 recession. Addressing the last sitting of the town council recently, which was attended by only four of the seven councillors, including the mayor and the deputy, Mr Lekwapa noted that although the recession improved in June 2009, the enormous long lasting economic damage wrought by its severity continued and funding of developments projects was cut down.

This, he noted, resulted in government freezing the growth of the public service.  At the same time, he explained that the revenue support grant remained fixed while demand for services increased in quantity and prices.

As a result, he said, the bulk of the grant went into the employee’s remunerations leaving very little for other activities such as infrastructure maintenance, staff development and the general community. The mayor further highlighted that in 2012, they celebrated their 20th anniversary. 

He said the celebration was not only for the purpose of celebrating their existence as a town, but also to put Sowa on the map and lure investors and businesses into the town.  The results, however, he said were not visible due to the fact that companies did not show up as they were still recovering from the recession.

He explained that he raised the matter because it had impacted on their ability as a local authority to deliver on their mandate. “Without enough personnel our capacity to serve our people was limited, hence development projects and partnerships that they would rather have enjoyed did not materialise,” he said.

In addition, Mr Lekwapa stated that poor implementation of projects also added to their failure as a council, pointing out that the SHHA infrastructure project and upgrading of storm water drainage took too long resulting in them exceeding the budget allocation while at the same time the original contractor went out of business and left the project incomplete.

He added that efforts to assist the contractor to complete the project bore no fruits and continued to give a bad name to local contractors for their ‘inability to take up and finish projects’.

“Not only did the project drain government’s coffers, but it has also delayed plot allocation and the SHHA office is inundated with calls from the public enquiring about the allocation of SHHA plots,” he noted. The public outcry, he said, is also an indication that the council has failed the public that has been looking up to it to respond to their needs. 

He further added that a lot of work done in the project needs review, hence the Ministry of Lands and Housing has engaged a consulting company to redesign and supervise completion of the project and so far the project is still at the designing stage.

He nonetheless said although they have had some failures, they have managed to have some outstanding successes such as the resealing of Sowa Internal roads, which he noted was successfully completed in January 2010 in spite of the almost half million double payment made to the contractor. 

Mayor Lekwapa said efforts were being made to recover the P464 543 that resulted from preparation of final accounts of the projects. ENDS