05 Feb 2019

Councillors in the Letlhakeng Sub-district were on Monday drilled on financial intelligence to enable them to manage their financial affairs.

Ms Pelontle Mongale from Julem Investments said it was vital for a person to “know their money”, adding that it was unfortunate that most employed Batswana depended on their monthly salaries for survival and never tried other income generating avenues.

“It is always wise to look at other ways of making money apart from just the monthly salary, because salary can never make one rich,” she said.

Ms Mongale said financial management was one of the vital skills that people should have, because failure on that aspect would keep them poor, no matter how much they earned.

“Good money management includes things such as desisting from unnecessary expenditure. The main aim is to multiply whatever money one has,” she said.

She also cautioned against accumulating money through debts, as well as avoiding long term loans since they could be risky, especially where there was no job security.

She also said being free of loans made one free to leave their jobs anytime to explore other money making avenues.

For his part, the assistant council secretary for Letlhakeng Sub-district, Mr Tumelo Seboko, said they were compelled to organise the workshop after realising that councillors easily lost financial gains they made during their term of office.

In his welcome remarks, the sub-district deputy chairman, Mr Lefoko Kegopotswe, said the workshop was vital because most councillors owned small and medium businesses, but they lacked money management skills, which made the chances of such businesses collapsing high.

He said the workshop would help them grow their businesses, adding that as councillors, they also needed to understand national issues such as the budget speech. ENDS