21 Mar 2023

Tutume District Council has collected a total revenue of P4 493 335, surpassing P3.7 million they had forecasted for the financial 2022/2023.

Addressing a full council meeting on Monday, the district council chairman, Mr Thatayaone Kehitile said they exceeded their target for revenue collection by over P700 000.

“We have been unable to meet our revenue collection targets for many years,” he said, explaining that their projection indicated that an additional P500 000 would be collected by end of the current financial year.

This, the chairman said, was due to robust strategies they had put in place to maximise revenue collection. “We are looking forward to better collection in the upcoming financial year of 2023/2024,” noted Mr Kehitile.

Also, he said his council had been allocated a recurrent budget amounting to about P139 million for 2023/24.

Further, he said this, together with the income from their own sources amounting to over P3 million, would beef up their recurrent budget to P142 million.

The chairman said they decided to re-align the district’s priorities with the national ones as outlined in the two year Transitional National Development Plan.

Therefore, he said they would have find ways to maximise revenue collection to augment the budget and be financially prudent in their spending if they were to effectively deliver on their mandate.

“I believe if you can all join me in this regard, together we can excel in addressing the financial burden that lies before us,” he said

On other issues, Mr Kehitile said council leadership was  aware that the district was vast making it a challenge for some community members to access services. It is for this reason, he said, they set out a schedule to at least visit two villages per quarter in an endeavour to take services to the people.

During the taking services to the people activities, he said they had received interesting responses that motivated them to do better in servicing their clients in different villages.  Ends