S/Phikwe Council to name, shame defaulters
Onalenna Kelebeile | Friday November 23, 2018 13:23
The council is owed P14.8 million in rates as of the end of October and over P5 million for the service levy during the same period. Mayor Molosiwa Molosiwa expressed concern over the debt, noting that at the same time the very people expect council to deliver on its mandate. He said at the ongoing full council meeting that effort was made in the form of house-to-house campaigns, SMS alerts and letters of notifications, but all yielded very little results. “Council has now decided to advertise the names of all defaulters in the newspapers from this month for a period of four weeks,” he said.
He added that the situation is a problem that needs to be addressed by all stakeholders, especially in this era where councils are supposed to generate money for themselves. Meanwhile, Molosiwa applauded the District Health Management Team (DHMT) for ensuring that no mortality was registered during the recent diarrhoea outbreak that attacked the under five population in September due to the Rota Virus.
As Selebi-Phikwe DHMT recorded 702 cases during the whole month of September, the DHMT immediately activated the ERRT hence managing to control the outbreak within a short period.
The Industrial Clinic was reserved as an isolation centre for the district. Molosiwa said the ERRT was also mobilised and put on alert mode to guard against Cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. He added that the Industrial and Botshabelo Clinics continued to offer cervical cancer screening to the community and encouraged everyone to utilise such services for early diagnosis so that treatment could be effected well on time. The mayor expressed gratitude over the impressive working relations and interaction that exist between the local authority and SPEDU company. “This is a commendable effort. It provides a platform for all development stakeholders to have first hand information about the progress that the SPEDU region has made towards the diversification of the economy and the revitalisation of the town.
He highlighted that SPEDU is currently involved with 50 companies, which are at different stages of development. Amongst them, 21 are at an advanced stage of implementation, he disclosed. He added that 14 of them are citizen-owned trading in information and technology, manufacturing, agriculture and construction. “There are also three government projects in infrastructure development and agriculture. Out of the 14, only four are foreign-owned companies in agriculture and manufacturing,” he said. He indicated that these companies are expected to invest about P1.7 billion, partly financed by the Citizen Entrepreneur Development Agency (CEDA) and Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) while the remainder will come from investors.
He noted that some of the companies have been offered factory shells and to-date 1,239 jobs have been created against a target of 1,770 by the end of the last quarter. “These numbers would continue to increase with the ongoing implementation of the SPEDU incentives as gazetted in February this year,” he said.
He happily announced that all projects that were earmarked for completion under the constituency funding for the financial year 2017-2018 have been completed save for Botshabelo Primary School and Botshabelo Kgotla. He said the two remaining projects would be implemented concurrently with 16 other projects earmarked for 2018-2019 financial year.
So far three projects have already started while the rest are at different stages of the tendering process.
Molosiwa further said that both the recurrent and capital budget maintenance of public facilities was ongoing.
He said they are also going to install solar tower lights at Selebi-Phikwe East and Selebi-Phikwe West through the constituency community projects.
Council has also been funded to the tune of P10 million under the road levy programme this financial year and the money would be used to maintain some internal roads using the full depth-depth reclamation technique.