01 May 2019

 Jwaneng Town Council (JTC) has adopted its Annual Performance Plan (APP) for 2019/2020 during a special full council on April 29.

Speaking at the forum after the plan was presented, Masa-a-Sele Ward councillor, Mr Tsietsi Oodira-Kwenje pleaded with the council management to ensure that the plan was followed.

Failure to implement in the past years, he said, resulted a conflict between councillors and management.

Cllr Oodira-Kwenje urged the town clerk as the accounting officer to ensure compliance and implementation, especially on issues such as maximising revenue through proper collection.

“JTC collects revenue through avenues such as rentals and service levies through the department of finance, but this department has in the past proved to be performing poorly. 

JTC procurement has also proven to be poor over the years, and other departments should also improve as their poor performance ends up pulling down the whole council,” he said.

Cllr Oodira-Kwenje said that such poor performance was despite the fact that annual performance plans were laid down yearly.

Jwaneng Chamber of Commerce chairperson, Mr Julius Sebako also called for thorough implementation of the plan as that was what the public as customers were interested in.

“We can put up good performance plans, but without implementation, all will be in vain. The public is more interested in efficiency than anything else,” he said.

Mr Sebako said that challenges remained on important issues such as giving priority to locals in tenders because those tasked with facilitating such often failed.

The town clerk, Mr Dick Kalantle however, indicated that JTC was one of the best performing councils in the country, even on the issues of revenue collection. 

He said that the council always managed to collect over 70 per cent of its revenue as compared to other councils that normally rate around 50 per cent.

“We admit that we may have issues with collection, but that should not nullify what we managed. 

We will make improvements, especially looking at the fact that we are not that far off the target and I can assure you of our commitment to improve,” he said.”

Mr Kalantle also admitted that along the way, challenges may arise that frustrated their efforts towards implementing the plan, but said that where failure occurred with no good reason, council management would equally be unhappy as the councillors.

“It is not the intention of JTC to fail implementing the plan, so I call on heads of various departments to do their best to implement,” he said.

Mr Kalantle also advised the heads to always brief councillors whenever they experienced challenges for them to appreciate the circumstances. ENDS