01 Apr 2013

 

Lobatse Town Mayor Ms Caroline Lesang has urged Lobatse town councillors to continue supporting the council in its endeavor to collect funds from its own sources of income.

Addressing a full council recently, Ms Lesang said collection of the money from the council’s sources of income was the only alternative that the council to achieve its target in 2013/14 financial year.

Ms Lesang said the revenue estimates from own sources for 2013/14 financial year was over P13 million,which is 13.3 per cent of the total revenue estimates. 

She noted that there has been insignificant growth in the Lobatse Town Council’s (LTC) own sources and urged all to continue looking for alternative sources to augment the current budget. 

Ms Lesang said while council continues to budget for revenue items like rates and service levy, collection of these funds remains a serious challenge. She noted that this was a concern during the 2012/13 budget estimates.

However, she said, for rates, council staff and councillors started house to house campaigns during the 2012/23 financial year and this has yielded a positive result.

“We will continue exploring other strategies to improve our revenue collection in the coming financial year “, she stressed.

She further stated that for the 2013/14 financial year, personnel emoluments (salaries and associated allowances, gratuities and pension) constitute 61 per cent of the budget with the remaining 39 per cent is shared between running expenses at 14 per cent, establishment expenses at 6 per cent and special expenditure at 19 per cent.

Ms Lesang called for prioritization and prudent financial management.

On other issues, Ms Lesang said LTC fire and emergency services would continue to strive to minimise the loss of life, injury, damage to property and the environment by providing best practice in fire fighting and prevention throughout the community. 

She said as the dry season approaches, the community should take extra precautions in setting unwanted bush fires because fires have increased in frequency over the past year, thus posing a threat to the environment, animals and human lives. 

Furthermore, Ms Lesang noted that while the largest number of fires were human- induced either through negligence, careless use of fire in agriculture and pasture lands and illegal land clearing, there were also concerns that buildings in areas of high fire risk exacerbate problems of fire control and management.

She said the severity of fires combined with continuing development of communities in and near forests puts many communities at risk and has substantially increased both the difficulty and cost of fire suppression.  ENDS