Councillors adopt inadequate budget
Lebogang Mosikare | Wednesday February 7, 2018 17:33
Presenting the budget during a special full council meeting, the chairperson of the finance committee Zibanani Benefield said that in 2017, the City of Francistown Council (COFC) approved budget proposals after an extensive consultation process, which gave all council structures an opportunity to make input into the budget.
“Council priorities were taken into consideration despite the restrictive ceilings and the full council approved the proposal before it was submitted to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD),” she said.
Benefield said the COFC had proposed a budget of P227,899,950 with a Revenue Support Grant (RSG) of P184,391,570. “The adjustments have been effected and the adjusted budget stands as P223,412,750 and the revised RSG is P180,264,470. These changes however did not affect the COFC priorities but were only aligned to the national priorities.”
Responding to the chairperson’s presentation, councillor Ephraim Maiketso said that the budget that was presented by Benefield is similar to the ones that were presented in the previous years.
“Francistown is the second largest city in Botswana but it is has not been given enough funds to cater for its development needs. Save for the P40 million allocated to the city for development of roads and related services, Francistown should be given enough money befitting its status to cater for its development,” Maiketso said.
Councillor Godfrey Kaelo echoed similar sentiments.
“Francistown is still behind in terms of developments. The money given to the city is not enough to meet its development budget. This should change in order to bring more developments and services to the city,” Kaelo said.
Councillor Ben Mpotokwane however encouraged the council to enhance its ways of collecting arrears from the public in order for the city to generate money that can be used for some of the city’s developments.
“We should encourage the electorates to pay their arrears in order to augment the income that the council is given by our parent ministry,” he said.