F/town councillors query Belgium trip

RYDER GABATHUSE
Staff Writer | Tuesday April 13, 2010 00:00

City mayor, Shadrack Nyeku, had apparently called last Friday's special full council meeting to brief the council about the trip, which is scheduled for Friday.  This reciprocates the visit by the Belgians last January. Francistown and the City of Genk have a twinning arrangement for the benefit of the two cities. Unfortunately, trouble started after the twinning committee, chaired by nominated councillor, Joyce Ndove, could not account for the trip. Ndove is on record failing to inform the council what they were going to do in Belgium at the taxpayer's expense. Generally, councillors were irked by the fact that the mayor did not 'show respect' for them as he did not find it appropriate to inform them about the impending trip in advance.

'He called the meeting for the councillors to approve the trip, the list of delegates and their expenditure instead of requesting the pertinent council committee to approve the list of nominated officials and the finance committee approving the funds,' queried a councillor who preferred anonymity. The councillor claimed that the mayor wanted the approval of the trip without the terms of reference thereby forcing the twinning committee to draft them.

The mayor is expected to reconvene a special full council Wednesday this week to re-brief the civic leaders on the purpose of the trip and its benefits to the council. Independent councillor, Ignatius Moswaane, among the 12 councillors who queried the mayor in a letter they submitted just before the Easter Holidays, said yesterday that things are generally not working out in the FCC.

'It's our vow to bring things to order. Look, the FCC consists of 22 councillors and anything that happens in the council should be communicated to all of us through the relevant council committees,' said Moswaane, a former mayor. Moswaane condemned Nyeku's leadership style for being secretive and excluding other councillors in things that they were supposed to be the first to know. He accuses the mayor of simply rubberstamping the decisions of the council staff thereby killing debate and denying councillors knowledge of certain crucial decisions. 'Recently, we realised that people that have been on the waiting list for residential plots were given only a month notice to update their information at the FCC. That was wrong for the council staff to do without passing the decision through the relevant council committee,' he said. He also queried the recent incident in which they realised that tenders for security were sold for P500 without the approval of the FCC.

'The business of the council is run through the relevant committees. What we want is that the mayor should run the FCC through the councillors and we are saying he can't claim that he has been instructed by the Town Clerk without our input,' complained Moswaane.

Back to the Genk trip, Moswaane says the FCC was forced to adjourn last Friday because there was no report stating the importance of the trip. 'You can imagine, the chairperson of the twinning committee, Ndove telling the meeting that she was not sure what the trip was for,' Moswane pointed out. He remarked that once elected to the office of the mayor, 'it is upon the councillor to avoid factional tendencies because that could affect the business of the council'. In other words, Moswaane said, Nyeku allowed BDP factionalism to cloud his decisions. Nyeku is a known member of the Barata-Phathi faction. He encouraged Nyeku to acquaint himself with the procedures of the council rather that hide behind his fingers and claim that he has not been advised properly.

The Botswana Congress Party (BCP) councillor for Francistown Central Ward, Ephraim Maiketso, concurs: 'We were worried that we were only informed at the eleventh hour about a trip to be wholly -sponsored by the FCC'.

'Our concern was merely that if the trip was urgent and in the best interest of the council, we were supposed to have been informed well in time than learning at the eleventh hour that some council officials were undertaking an official trip,' said Maiketso. Other councillors who wrote to the mayor recently are Buti Billy, James Kgalajwe, Ford Moiteela, Masego Pule, Shah Jack, Johnson Moremi, Robert Mosweu, Albert Mosojane, Ben Mpotokwane, Moswaane and Alec Tabengwa. Quizzed about the issue, which sparked a row recently, Nyeku admitted that 'there was a mistake in handling the Belgium trip'. 'The truth of the matter is that the twinning committee came out with a list of people bound for Belgium. We should have called a full council meeting in time to brief all the stakeholders on the proposal,' Nyeku owned up.'After the twinning committee had met, the Belgians called us and indicated that it was getting late for us to start preparing ourselves for the return trip and that's when we moved fast and came up with the list'.

The disputed list include Nyeku, who is the head of the delegation, deputy town clerk (finance and administration), Geoffrey Moagi Gare, councillor Joyce Ndove, environmental officer, Keletso Gomotsang, principal youth officer, Mogomotsi Seemule, an officer from the Institute of Health Sciences (IHS), Ludo Nkhwalume, and ward development committee representative, Joseph Mabutho.Nyeku said the councillors 'are demanding for the information on what was going to be done in Genk'.