12 Jun 2017

Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Slumber Tsogwane has held Kweneng District Council liable for under collecting revenue raised from council’s own sources saying that it is their responsibility. 

Addressing KDC councillors recently, Minister Tsogwane said it was council’s responsibility to make money from their own income streams to supplement their budget .

In view of this, Mr Tsogwane expressed concern that from a set target of P27 million that council was supposed to collect, they only managed to raise P9 million from that amount which translated to 24 per cent of collected revenue from council’s own sources. 

That, Mr Tsogwane said showed that there was a problem, encouraging the council to collect revenue from all sources such as service levy and rates.

He also cautioned councillors that although they had a budget deficit every year, they should understand other factors that influenced the economy’s performance and governance in general. 

He cited that Kweneng district had budget over P70 billion for projects in DDP 8, against P101 billion budgeted for in NDP 11 for all national projects during this period.

That, the minister explained showed that there was need to prioritise.

He advised councillors to understand that since mineral revenues were declining, government revenues were bound to be affected by this decline thus he reminded them that they had a responsibility to account and be responsive to the demands of the electorate.

Earlier, when presenting councillors’ requests to the minister KDC chairperson, Mr Jeffrey Sibisibi said that councilors were concerned about insufficient budget allocated to KDC despite their many challenges and that they were the second largest district after central district. 

The budget allocations, he said were far too low to deal with complicated challenges the district was facing coupled with the fact that the district was “a dormitory for Gaborone city workers,” as all the nearest villages to the city were experiencing population explosion. 

Again, he mentioned that it was difficult to decentralise some of their services which dated back to 2009.

He added that although as a council they had agreed to establish sub districts in Thamaga/Mogoditshane and Lentsweletau they could not because of budgetary constraints. 

For those that they had managed to establish such as Sojwe, Salajwe, Takatokwane and Motokwe service centres, it was difficult to spread out services due to shortage of funds.

Meanwhile Thamaga North councillor Mr Palelelo Motaosane had wanted the minister to explain criteria used to fund projects citing that other villages were enjoying full packages that came with village infrastructure development while on the other hand Thamaga village large as it was did not have streetlights.

That is despite the spate of criminal activties that usually hit the village. ENDS