05 Jun 2016

South East District Council chairperson, Mr Phenyo Segokgo says residents should expect declined quality services owing to reduced budget for this financial year. 

Opening the full council meeting recently, Mr Segokgo said the council’s recurrent budget for this financial year was P129.4 million as opposed to the P133.3 million for 2015/16. 

“The decline in the budget means that our ability as the council to provide quality services to our residents has declined too,” he said.

Due to the decline, funds awarded for maintenance of grounds and buildings, hire of transport, maintenance of roads and road signs went down by almost 50 per cent while streetlights maintenance has not been budgeted for. 

He explained that the decline was a result of slow recovery from the world economic recession. 

Nonetheless, Mr Segokgo said the district would continue to implement various socio economic programmes aimed at uplifting livelihoods of the community. 

He indicated that they would continue to assist residents through alternative packages programme, which he said had, since inception, registered 225 projects. 

However, he said mismanagement, lack of commitment and dedication, shortage of operational space, continued to affect implementation of the programme. 

On other issues, he said the Ministry of Health had adopted the new Treat All strategy by the World Health Organisation which emphasises treating all HIV infected individuals regardless of their CD4 count. 

He said the recommendation was necessitated by new scientific evidence confirming clinical and programmatic benefits of early treatment of HIV disease. 

Further, he said having effected t