13 Apr 2016

Southern District Council’s finance committee chairperson, Cllr William Masibi has urged fellow councillors to be innovative in generating income to aid government to deliver the necessary and quality services to the people.

Speaking during a special full council session in Kanye on Tuesday Cllr Masibi said the government relies on natural resources like diamonds to meet the expectation of funding ministries, theirs included which covers day to day operations per Budget Speech for 2016/2017.

He also said councillors and public officers should continue to encourage Batswana to uplift their lives in order to reduce reliance on government hand-outs by engaging in available government programmes and exercising due care when using public funds.

Mr Masibi said the total Revenue Support Grant for 2016/2017 financial year is P301million while the total grant for 2015/2016 was P321 million , which indicate a budget decrease of 6.4 per cent.

He mentioned that the Southern District was requested to prepare the budget in August 2015 and the Southern District’s ideal budget was P408 million and the budget ceiling came in February 2016 and Southern District has been allocated over P286 million which resulted in councils down sizing their budget by 50 per cent.

However, Cllr Kagisanyo Tau of Nyorosi East, commenting on the speech he said he appreciates the fact that there is insufficient capital that is going to affect roads and therefore the budget needs to be amended so that enough money could be allocated to the roads for construction.

Cllr Eric Chelenyane of Gasegogwane ward suggested that councillors should come up with strategies of generating income. He said they should make collections from stray cattle, rent and litter picking. ENDS