18 Jun 2019

Gaborone City Council (GCC) has set aside P3.1 million to capacitate staff on critical skills such as project management, smart work ethics, tendering processes, emotional intelligence, anti-corruption and customer care. 

This was revealed by Gaborone Mayor, Mr Kagiso Thutlwe, when addressing a full council meeting  on June 17.

“This is meant to improve on service delivery and we are confident that these short courses will go a long way in improving our performance,” he said.  

To improve efficiency in the council processes, Mr Thutlwe said there was progress regarding Information Technology (IT) Systems as follows; supply, installation, configuration and commissioning of automated construction permitting system. He said that the project was currently at testing stage.

Regarding the design and development of the GCC website, staff portal, mobile application and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data Code, which would give users access to council information, Mr Thutlwe said such was complete, adding that the two were being populated with council information for the purpose of testing the functionalities. 

Additionally, the mayor said the records management tender was also in progress, adding that the council took a decision to automate its records to facilitate service delivery, as records provided evidence of business activity and transactions. 

“The company appointed in January 2019 conducted a records survey in March for familirisation with council records management status and they submitted their report on March 14. 

Partitioning of the hall is still ongoing to avail adequate space for machines to be used, after which automation will start,” he said. 

Giving a brief update of GCC’s expenditure up to end of May, he said from this financial year’s recurrent budget of more than P440 million, the council’s expenditure stood at more than P53 million, representing 11 per cent of the budget.

Concerning revenue collection, the mayor said total collection stood at more than P88.6 million as at end of May ‘being revenue support grant amounting to more than P65.4 million for quarter one and income from own source amounting to more than P23.2 million’.

He also noted with gratitude that there had been improvement in collection of rates, adding that “last year this time only more than P4.1 million had been received, while this year more than P14.6 million was collected during the month of May.”

In total, he said more than P20.2 million had been collected from rates during the two months of April and May. 

This, he said was made possible by a strategy put in place by the council to discuss the matter with stakeholders through consultative seminars. 

He said GCC conducted successful consultative seminars with Setlhoa Development Consortium on April 5 and Phakalane plot owners on April 26 to discuss issues on the general administration of rules and get feedback from rate payers.

Furthermore, Mr Thutlwe said rate billing for 2019/2020 financial year showed that more than P84.7 million was billed from 34 414 plots. 

This bill, he said, dropped from just over P110.4 million, which was billed in 2018/2019, because all properties that were exempted from paying rates as listed in Section 39 of the Local Government Act were removed from the billing schedule. 

This was prompted by data cleaning that has been going on. 

He also indicated that the council had seven service points for payment of rates as follows: Civic Centre, Tsholofelo Service Centre, Old Naledi Service Centre, Broadhurst SHHA offices, Tsholofelo SHHA offices, Gaborone West SHHA offices and Parks Offices in Block 5.

All these stations, he said had Point of Sales machines installed, adding that First National and Barclays banks were also accessible for payments of rates. ends