17 Feb 2014

Francistown councillors have approved this year’s P185 million council budget on conditions that there would be proper management and coordination of funds.

Presenting this year’s budget during a special full council meeting, finance committee chairperson, Councillor Raoboy Mpuang said this year’s budget had increased by 11 per cent from P163 million of last year  to P185 million.

Mr Mpuang said most of the funds were channelled towards salaries and allowances for council members, adding that because of the increase, many of the council’s departments have seen an increase in their budget.

Cllr Mpuang said the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering got the lion’s share with a 30 per cent increase.

This, he said, would enable the department to address problems of streets lights and storm water drainage, which need urgent attention to prevent flooding in some areas. He told the meeting that P5 million has been set aside to buy seven vehicles, including the mayor’s vehicle; particularly that transport has been a major challenge in terms of taking services to the people.

In addition, he said education department has received a 10 per cent increase aimed at addressing shortage of stationary at schools. Last year, he said they received numerous complaints from the public regarding shortage of text books, and parents were forced to buy books for their children.

Debating the budget, Cllr for Ikageleng ward, Mr Tabengwa Tabengwa appealed to council management to improve management and coordination of various resources.

Mr Tabengwa noted that increasing the budget and not improving on management would not address challenges faced.

He suggested that Council should conduct stock taking of equipment before budget allocations, adding that sometime last year, some schools were short of books and toiletries while some had stock piles of books and toiletries.

Councillor for Satellite, Mr Buti Billy said the increased budget is still inadequate to maintain the city roads and therefore asked Council to consider seeking assistance from the central government to address the problems of internal roads because constant maintenance has not brought any results except high expenditure. Cllr Billy called for the restructuring of housing rates, saying they are too high for their clients and some of the clients have decided not to pay their dues as protest of poor service delivery, which covers poor waste collection.

He said it was time street lights are replaced with tower lights as per the communities’ requests because streets lights are always in need of servicing and replacement.

For his part, the City Clerk, Mr Lebuile Israel appealed to the councillors to help in the collection of monies owed to the council, saying their records showed that prominent and business people were not paying rates which amount to P44 million. Only P9 million has been collected, he said. ENDS