24 Feb 2022

Selebi Phikwe Town Council (SPTC) is looking into engaging the private sector to run the town’s abattoir.

Officially opening a council meeting recently, the mayor, Mr Lucas Modimana, said engaging the private sector was the only viable option to keeping the facility operational.

That followed closure of the town’s abattoir facility by the council for failing to comply with the Livestock and Meat Industries Act and Trade Effluent Agreements.

Mr Modimana said the abattoir was old and susceptible to frequent breakdown and proved to be costly for the council hence the urgent need to involve the private sector.

He indicated that the council, which was currently financially constrained, would benefit from rental for the duration of the lease period.

On one hand, Mr Modimana appealed to the community to pay rates and service levies to help the council augment the limited funds it received from government.

“The council continues to experience low collection especially on rates and service levy and the accumulated arrears for both amounts to P21.2 million as at January 31 this year.  However, we have so far collected about P1.6m on rates and only P30 000 on service levy,” he said.

In addition to the existing strategies towards debt collection, he said the council launched a collection campaign dubbed Collect a 23, which was aimed at sensitising the community on the importance of paying service levy.

“It is our collective responsibility to develop this ton and we can only do that if we strive to take pride in paying our dues towards levies,” he said.

On the development of the town, Mr Modimana explained that the eleventh National Development Plan (NDP 11) and the fourth Urban Development Plan (UDP 4) would be ending on March 31 this year and therefore the council had started preparations for the NDP 12 and UDP 5.

“Preparation is very crucial because the council managed to map all issues as per the Mid-term review of NDP 11 and UDP 4 and also managed to come up with due remedies in terms of projects and programmes,” he added.

Despite the tight budget allocations, Mr Modimana, however, commended government for having been able to maintain budget allocations to social protection programmes.  Ends