23 Jun 2022

Francistown City Council is committed to spending funds allocated to them efficiently and effectively to bring developments and prosperity to the city.

Officially opening full council meeting on Monday, the mayor of the City of Francistown, Mr Godisang Radisigo said council had been allocated just over P217 million for the 2022/2023 financial year.

He said the city’s priority area during the course of the year was infrastructure maintenance, waste management and vegetation control as well as upgrading of Information Technology Infrastructure.

Mr Radisigo said council was expected to receive P87 million to fund development budget for the 2022/23 financial year. He explained that the funds would go towards Constituency Community Programmes and Ipelegeng Programme. Further, he said the funds would finance maintenance of roads, street lights, primary school back lock eradication and maintenance.

Mr Radisego said council would improve on revenue collection, which he said was critical because it provided council with necessary capital to drive its mandate.

He said the rate at which council would generate and collect income was directly linked to council’s capacity to provide quality services and finance critical projects that met the needs of the community.

He expressed concern that council was owed more than P127 million in rates and SHHA service levy.

The mayor said council was left behind in revenue collection but they intended to maximise its collection.

Therefore, he said council would embark on an ‘Agility in action programme,’ the campaign that would revolve ideas of sensitisation, accessibility to pay points and data cleaning.

“We are still working on the logistics of the programme,” he said. The mayor reminded councillors that they were on the second half of the five-year term.

He said they must work hard hand in hand with civil servants to take the area to another level.

He said council was mandated to implement government priorities which were aligned to Vision 2036 and Sustainable Development Goals.

“Let me also state that we are in the final year of the National Development Plan 11 which ends on March 31, 2023,” he said adding that during the mid-term review of NDP11 government came up with the Economic Recovery and Transformation Plan.

This, he said emanated from the need to resuscitate the economy as it was disrupted by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

He said President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi introduced the Reset  Agenda, which was a machinery that sought to remove hurdles on service delivery and propel Botswana towards a high income status.

 Mr Radisego also touched on the issue of population census which took place from March 18 to April 4, noting that the exercise was successful. He thanked everyone including the community for being cooperative.

“The data from the census aids policy maker to make realistic development plans as it captures a wide spectrum of a country’s population data and characteristics as well as help track progress we have made as a nation in addition to drawing up legislative boundaries,” he said.

He said according to preliminary results released by Statistics Botswana, the City of Francistown population stood at 103 417 with 34 299 households, representing a 0.3 per cent growth compared with 2011 population which stood at 98 961. ENDs.