20 Mar 2019

Effective local governance is critical in delivering quality social services and municipal infrastructure, Gaborone Mayor, Mr Kagiso Thutlwe, has said.

Officiating at the Gaborone City Council Full Council Meeting, Mr Thutlwe expressed gratitude that there had been great improvement in this regard.
“Our committees have been effective and functional in delivery of our mandate and stiff penalties have been taken for members who deliberately missed meetings,” he said.

After it has been non-functional for some time, he said the Audit Committee had been resuscitated during this quarter and had been informed that they had managed to deal with backlog of their cases.

Mr Thutlwe said had also introduced a Consultative forum to share information on project planning and implementation.

This forum, the mayor said had greatly improved the Council’s feedback mechanism.

Further, to improve efficiency and effectiveness, he said the Council had also resolved that Education, Health and Social Services committees be restructured into two committees, ‘and I am happy to announce that effective April 2019, this committee will be divided into Education and Health committee and Social Services Committee.’

“The committees will be established and its members will be selected during this Full Council session,” he added.

To improve on the response time on issuance of planning permits, Mr Thutlwe said the Physical Planning Committee would seat twice in a month instead of once monthly effective next quarter April 2019.  This, he said was meant to address issues of doing business since the country had not been doing well in this regard.

He implored all, especially chairpersons of committees, to work hard to improve efficiency and effectiveness of their committees and ensure Council’s annual objectives were achieved

Furthermore, the Mayor emphasised that Human Resource played a critical role in the Council’s delivery system, adding that manpower audit had been successfully done and completed. Ends