16 Feb 2020

The annual increase of number of people who rely on Government Revenue Support Grant is worrisome.

Southern District Council (SDC) finance committee chairperson Mr William Masibi said this when presenting the 2020/2021 budget proposal, which was approved by the councillors at the special full council recently.

“Council should come up with strategies to rescue the situation by increasing own source and cost cutting measures,” he said.

He therefore noted that, this also called for a review in the revenue collection strategies, cost recovery measure and collection of arrears.

“We need to come up with practical and attainable revenue collection methods in order to generate our targeted own source of income for us to achieve prudence in our finances,” he said.

He then called upon the finance committee to exercise proper control on expenditure and eliminate accrual of deficits, adding that this could motivate more investments and in turn be able to sustain a balanced budget.

Mr Masibi noted that SDC proposed an amount of P476 691 910 as Revenue Support Grant being the tentative budget for financial year 2020/2021, but was allocated P407 798 021 after the ministerial release.

“Our proposed budget became P423 576 120, making a down cut of P53 115 790 with own source of P15 778 100,” he said.

Mr Masibi therefore noted that the Revenue Support Grant gave a growth of P33 392 957, which was 8.56 per cent higher compared to the 2019/20 ceiling of P374 741 840.

He however noted that although the budget was constrained, SDC had considered employment creation, enhancement of education, reduction of poverty, stakeholder engagement, staff capacitation and organisational sustenance as focal areas.

“The bulk of this budget allocates an amount of P249 787 050 to sustenance of human resource, thus carrying a total weight of 58.97 per cent,” he said.

He noted that the school stationery and equipment was allocated P17 106 750 compared to the P13 335 720 in 2019/2020, which carried 4.03 per cent of the proposed budget.
“Relief of Destitute Persons is allocated P42 080 140 compared to the P39 336 810 of 2019/2020, which is 9.93 per cent of the current proposed budget,” he said.

Mr Masibi noted that the budget proposal had realised no growth under the establishment expenses as its vote had been allocated P34 312 110 compared to the P35 202 800 of the 2019/20 budget.

He noted that the reduction accounted to the need to squeeze out wastage and put in place control standards in order to effectively realise more output with less input to sustain organisational efficiency.

Mr Masibi highlighted that there were specific challenges such as payment of lighting, gas and water that needed immediate intervention.

He noted that payment of monthly water bills for the district in areas such as Rural Administration Centre and Primary Schools for the continued running of the district operations had taken a chunk of the budget, adding that bills were increasing.

In response, councillors appealed to the committee to ensure that in the coming years the preparation for budget plans were made on time to give councillors enough time to delibarate on it with informed minds. ENDS