27 Aug 2020

Selebi-Phikwe Town Council (SPTC) has intensified its revenue collection undertaking.

Addressing a full council meeting in Selebi Phikwe on Tuesday, SPTC mayor, Mr Lucas Modimana, said COVID-19 pandemic had affected the council’s revenue generation, hence the need to intensify revenue collection, revealing that total rates arrears stood at P20 million.

He said the council had embarked on intensive collection measures, which included house to house campaigns, leadership involvement and legal action against defaulters.

Mr Modimana said for this financial, the council had collected P269 646 as at July 31, adding that the service levy income was also not spared by the pandemic, as of the P6.4 million owed to the council, only P92 543 was collected.

In a quest to intensify revenue collection, he said a rates bill was gazetted in the Government Gazette on July 24, adding that ‘this is initial stage of the bigger plan by the council in its endeavour to intensify revenue collection”.

Mr Modimana further shared that SPTC proposed a recurrent budget amounting to P196.6 million, which will be financed by an overall estimated revenue support grant of P182.2 million and income from own source amounting to P14.4 million.

He added that development budget priority was given to projects and programmes that had been funded under NDP 11. 

Mr Modimana said looking at the economic situation of the town, the council proposed projects for a three-year period with priorities being infrastructure maintenance, ICT equipment, primary school furniture, local economic development, fleet expansion and construction of an abattoir pre-treatment plant.

Furthermore, he said infrastructure maintenance remained a ‘thorn in the flesh’ as the town infrastructure, especially roads, had not been maintained in a long time.

He said some of the roads had reached their lifespan and were in dire need of reconstruction, adding that some of the gravel roads needed to be paved, while some earth roads needed to be upgraded to gravel roads.

The council building facilities on one hand, he said, were also dilapidated to a point where some were no longer habitable. 

In addition, Mr Modimana said in the face of budget constraints, minor maintenance and development was ongoing, adding ‘most of these works are done in-house’.

These projects included maintenance of unpaved roads, bush clearing along the road reserves, construction of bus bays and road markings, as well as maintenance of streetlights, which was ongoing in Phase Two. Ends