GCC should up its� game
Mmegi Editor | Thursday September 22, 2016 15:42
That dream seems to elude the city despite it being a host to one of the most complex and expensive operations in diamond mining - Diamond Trading Company.
Three years after DTC was relocated from London to Gaborone, we still fight for space with stray cattle; potholes take decades to be filled, whilst streetlights and traffic are hardly maintained in some parts of the city.
Reports that the city council has engaged a private company to control the movement of stray animals could not have come at the right time although belated.
These cattle from neighbouring villages of Tlokweng, Gabane and Mmokolodi, amongst other villages, are a menace on our roads. Day and night motorists are forced to hit hard on their break pedals to give way for cattle whose owners do not care about their whereabouts, the meagre charges they may face, or whether the cattle cause loss of human life.
In addition to this, the city mayor Kagiso Thutlwe this week announced that his council might fail to pay electricity and water bills for primary schools.
He cited several reasons such as low collection of rates and levies.
“We have recorded worrisome inactivity in major income streams such as advertising signs, interest on investment, SHHA service levy, staff rentals, and parking fees which have collected less than 20 percent of the budget”.
The mayor also acknowledged that there are loyal customers who pay their rates on time.
We urge the GCC personnel to pull up their socks and go out there to meet their customers to make sure that all of them pay their dues on time to enable the city to address the challenges mentioned elsewhere in this article.
It is unacceptable for a huge chunk of the population to be subjected to suffering because of the careless few who cannot see the importance, and urgency of paying rates on time.
One of the options available to the council is to compile a list of non-compliant customers, bring them together under one roof and get their side of the story.
This may come at an expense but it is worth undertaking to ensure that all customers are compliant.
One Head of State once said that city life is totally different from village life and he was on point – that once you decide to live, or set up a business in the city, you should be prepared to separate with your cash to get the services, as well as enable others to be given the services.
Today’s thought
'I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble'.
– Augustus