04 Oct 2022

Kgatleng District employees have been called upon to come up with new ways of approaching work to ensure effective public service delivery.

Kgatleng District Council Chairperson, Mr Daniel Molokwe said this when addressing the full council meeting on Monday.

 This, he said against the backdrop of unmet timelines and targets attributed to a workforce that was not pulling together.

He said it was important to appreciate the co-existence of staff members and the importance of cordial working relationship in order to bring the much needed developments in the district.

Thus, Mr Molokwe said there was no doubt that, staff members and politicians in the district could do better in handling matters pertaining to some of the challenges at the Pilane landfill, the status of internal roads as well as land use matters.  

“’It is only if we change tact and approach such issues cordially and  collectively for the common good of the Bakgatla community, that we all exist here to serve,” he said.

He further noted that it was pointless to continue working at cross purpose to the Reset Agenda and the Local Government Transformation Strategy that had been embraced by the district.

On other issues, Mr Molokwe stated that as the country was still recovering from the aftermath of the COVID 19 pandemic and Russia – Ukraine conflicts, ripple effects continued to linger, thereby hindering delivery of services.

Such ripple effects, he said were further felt at household levels, characterised by increase in prices of domestic food items, especially wheat and cooking oil, public transport fares all due to surge in petrol prices.

He commended government for some interventions geared towards cushioning households which amongst others, included the temporary reduction of Value Added Tax from 14 per cent to 12 per cent, the exclusion of cooking oil and liquid petroleum gas from tax, increment of student allowance by 18.5 per cent, which he said were meant to ease the lives of Batswana.

Mr Moloko regretted that the council’s financial position was further crippled by failure to collect enough income.

To this end, he said the monthly targets of collecting revenue were not met citing that at end of August,  only P1.7 million was collected against the target of P3.8 million, an under collection of just over P2.3m.

“It is indeed a worrisome state and there is need to double efforts in implementing collection strategies,” he stated

Regarding management of Village Development Committees (VDCs), he stated that he had encouraged the committees across the district to utilise their finances to undertake much needed developments to the level of what they had accumulated instead of holding on to funds which were mostly used for operational matters.

He emphasised that putting  public funds to good use was vital, more so that the council budget was much lower than what was requested.

“I have also alluded Village Development Committees to be self-sustainable and thus have reliable streams of revenue,” he said. Ends