City suffers lack of skills, slashed budget - Mayor

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Wednesday June 24, 2009 00:00

 

Opening a full council meetingon Monday, Harry Mothei, said the small number of technical experts they had been able to recruit usually left for greener pastures.

He said that might have been the main problem behind many projects being deferred to the financial year 2010/2011.

He said  the just ended Urban Development Plan II of 2003-2009 came with its opportunities and challenges. He indicated that during this plan period, Gaborone District was faced with the challenge of shortage of funds with some plans being deferred from 2009 to the 2016 plan.

He said examples of such projects include the construction of Legolo Road and associated storm water drainage, upgrading of the traffic lights monitoring system, SHAA roads and upgrading and bituminisation of roads for Priority Two areas.

Mothei stated that the approved amount of the allocated recurrent budget to GCC will be cut by seven percent, which implies that some of the projects that were planned to be implemented during this financial year will be forgone. 'This is a major setback in the development of our city,' he said. He said this should be an eye opener for the councillors and the GCC. He stated that it should be a reminder of why they need to work together as the council to explore various strategies, in an endeavor to find alternative sources of funding and lessen dependency on the central government.

'We should remember that we are not an island. We have to open ourselves to different partnerships and also benchmark on other institutions and organisations with similar challenges,'

Mothei said, while explaining further that their starting point should be to resuscitate all their twinning arrangements as well as forge new partnerships locally for the development of the city. The mayor revealed that the council is owed about P73,110,000 in bills of plot owners who have been defaulting. He said this negatively affected the cash flow of the council. He noted that in an effort to collect rate arrears, the council has been writing letters to the defaulters but the letters have been returned due to closure of post boxes.

Mothei said there has also been the challenge of identifying some of the plot owners. 'Plans are underway to deliver the returned mails house to house and addresses will be requested from those who have changed their post boxes.

I urge you to encourage members of your communities to come forward and pay rates in order to avoid penalties and maintain the cash flow of the council,' he said.