22 Sep 2020

Chairperson of the Southern District Council Mr Thamiso Chabalala has underscored the need to strengthen revenue collection strategies and review spending patterns to save the council from a looming budget deficit.

He told while a full council meeting on September 21 that the council was already at a P58 million deficit at the end of the first quarter of the 2020/2021 financial year, and therefore it was imperative to employ the best strategies that could ensure effective service delivery with limited resources.

“I have noted with concern that this financial deficit has impacted negatively on service delivery.

We are currently pushed to using programme and projects funds to finance our daily operations, and this is a worrisome state of affairs which needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. 

We need to immediately re-look into our spending trends, income strategies and review our budgeting models,” he said.

Consequently, Mr Chabalala called on implementing departments to exercise caution in their expenditure while at the same time aiming to achieve more with limited resources. 

He said the status quo should be a motivating factor for the council to come up with new cost recovery strategies and redirect their processes to be cost effective.

He noted that workable Public Private Partnerships and strengthening revenue collection strategies could go a long way in ensuring the council maintained a positive account. This, he noted, would reduce dependency on government funding.

“Southern district is currently being celebrated for coming up with workable partnerships on development of shopping malls like Mongala and so we need to do more in that regard to maximise possible proceeds. 

It is very critical that we strengthen our revenue collection strategies and come up with new sources of revenue to augment the little that we have at our disposal.

You will, for example, realize that we are not performing at our full capacity in the collection of sanitation and SHHA fees,” he said.

Additionally, the chairperson emphasised that the cost of projects should be kept at minimal right through implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This, he noted, also needed to extend to the procurement processes to ensure accuracy, efficiency and timeliness. Ends