11 Dec 2022

Sowa Town mayor, Mr Olifant Mfa has decried the council’s revenue collection challenges faced despite having   strategies in place to for collect money from defaulters.

 Addressing a full council session on recently , Mr Mfa said for them to succeed in rendering their services as a council, they needed funds to run and without cash flow it was difficult to fulfil their mandate.

He noted that as at October this year, their revenue collection stood at P1.6 million translating to 66.1 per cent of their total budget and that was not pleasing. Mr Mfa said despite that people faced challenges, there was need to pay for services rendered by council for continuity purposes.

Furthermore, the mayor pointed out that the council also faced challenges of non-payments of rates, market and sanitation fees. He noted that although the council continued to send reminders to the defaulters some chose not to act on those reminders and the council was now left with no other option but to engage the courts.

In addition, Mr Mfa highlighted that their financial woes continued to affect them, citing that to date they had exhausted P28.5 million which accounts to 74 per cent of their recurrent budget.

However, he said even if they were in that state of financial crisis, they need a concerted effort to deliver their mandate effectively and efficiently so as to meet the expectation of the community they serve.

He thus pleaded with the council management and fellow councillors to prioritise in their spending. to avoid

 On other issues, mayor Mfa informed the house that recently, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development embarked on symposium which he attended together with other local authorities and stakeholders themed “Batho pele, closer, faster, better, transforming local government to improve livelihoods.”

He explained that the symposium was held mainly to introspect on progress and achievements made in the first year of the ministry’s transformation plan and to stimulate and energise the transformation process to achieve Vision 2036 pillars. ENDS