28 Sep 2015

Gaborone City Council (GCC) leader of opposition, Ms Veronica Lesole, who is also specially nominated councillor, has urged Gaborone City councillors to put their mandate of serving their electorates at the forefront of their agenda. 

Commenting on the mayor’s speech at the ongoing Gaborone City Council Full Meeting, Ms Lesole said what transpired recently culminated in postponing the meeting, noting this was a bad development which should never repeat in future. 

On Monday last week, Mayor Kagiso Thutlwe postponed the meeting to Wednesday arguing that he received the opening speech late and therefore needed to comprehensively study it first and add some important elements into it before it could be delivered. 

However, Ms Lesole, who is also former Gaborone Mayor, said there was no need for the sitting to have been postponed because the full council meeting was not only about the Mayor’s speech because there were other different business items which needed to be attended to during such opportune sittings.  

On other issues, she said payment of council rates should be synchronised with water and electricity bills so that the council did not experience problems of defaulters. 

She was however happy about the rate at which the council was collecting default rates payments. 

She further said her party; Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was doing everything possible to restore both water and power to normalcy, adding that it was not true that it had been doing nothing or was recently put into action by the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) demonstration march. 

Meanwhile, Ms Lesole said while the council had seen it fit to embark on construction of public toilets, it should focus on providing the same at primary schools because hygiene was an important component in children’s daily lives. 

Another speaker, Councillor McDonald Peloetletse however lamented that the Mayor’s speech did not contain issues relevant to Gaborone residents unlike in his previous speech.   

Cllr Peloetletse however, said he was optimistic that the young leader, whom he said needed support to achieve the council mandate, would introspect. 

Thus, he advised the mayor to desist from dwelling much politics in his speech and focus primarily on developments, adding there should also be a good working atmosphere between the mayor and the council executive. 

Another councillor, Mr James Matlhogojane said while he welcomed introduction of the disability allowance, it was insufficient, particularly that it was meant to uplift and sustain lives of disadvantaged groups. 

Meanwhile, the council was yesterday expecetd to look into the issue of whether Cllr Oarabile Motlaleng, who was absent in the last full council and had been outside the country for some time, was still eligible to retain his position. 

Cllr Motlaleng surprised many last Friday with his presence at the meeting.  However, the council attorney was not available to give direction on the matter.  The Local Government Act stipulates that a councillor who failed to attend three ordinary council sittings without a leave from the mayor or reasonable excuse, would cease to be a councillor as such his position would be declared vacant. Ends