12 Sep 2017

Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso has challenged councils to ensure that they collect revenue owed to them by March 2018.

Addressing the Central District Council sitting on Monday as part of her ministry’s decision to interact with councillors, the assistant minister warned that her ministry would in future allocate revenue based on efforts made by individual councils in collection of revenue arrears and or debts.

“This cannot be acceptable looking into the ever increasing dependence on central government for financing council programmes” said Ms Tshireletso, who is also an MP for Mahalapye East.

She called on all districts to develop strategies for collecting government revenue in order to provide much needed services to the communities they serve.

The assistant minister said it was not correct for councils to demand more funds from the minister’s office while efforts to collect revenue were almost non-existent.
“Prudent financial management is critical and integral to the sustainability of council delivery systems,” Ms Tshireletso said.
In her submissions, the assistant minister termed as painful the findings that some of the debtors were council employees and other government departments.

On other issues, the assistant minister challenged councillors to take keen interest in project implementation and ensure they were delivered on time.

She also talked against reports of projects delays despite government having spent taxpayer’s money engaging consultants and supervisors.

“For Central District Council, teachers’ houses at Ratsie Setlhako in Palapye and Suping in Letlhakane undertaken through ESP 1 (2016/17) have still not yet been completed,” she said, adding that Central District was yet to award ESP 2.

The Mahalapye legislator said her ministry was concerned that despite putting in place management structure and resourcing them with qualified engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, projects management at districts still failed.

Some of the councillors conceded that project implementation faced challenges, hence projects were not delivered on time.

Serowe Administrative Authority Sub-council chairperson, Mr Mpho Kooreme suspected that public servants too had a hand in delayed project implementation and cited corruption as one of the factors that contributed immensely to projects non-completion.

Mr Kooreme called on harmonisation of some policies and guidelines pertaining to projects meant to uplift lives of the people. He found that some requirements were too prohibitive and called on relaxing of such.

Nominated councillor, Mr Ronald Mojakgomo cited Sekgoma Hospital and Department of Road Transport and Safety as some of the failed projects. He expressed his fear for patients at the hospital while he found the DRTS to be a white elephant.

Councillor Lesego Raditanka opined that the establishment of the eight remaining sub-councils in the district affected service delivery.

Although seven sub-districts were operational, Mr Raditanka found that the remaining eight could help in reducing distance for earmarked beneficiaries. Ends