Budgetary constraints hinder service delivery
Kgatleng District Council is faced with budgetary constraints, which has impacted negatively on their service delivery mandate.
Addressing the District Council this week, Council Chairperson, Daniel Molokwe said the situation has been further exacerbated by the Council’s inability to raise their Own Revenue Source (ORS) that otherwise would augment the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) from Government.
Molokwe said the Council Leadership has caused action on Revenue Maximisation strategies, as well as Containment of Costs so as to generate the much-needed Revenue for the Council.
“As directed by our Ministry about Implementation of the Revenue Maximisation Objectives, I am happy to inform you that Council has since engaged Central Government departments housed in the Rural Administration Centre (RAC) to share cost on utilities - water and electricity. Affected departments have since been furnished with a share of monthly bills effective
April 2021,” he said.
He said discussions are already underway between Council and their main banker, First National Bank Botswana (FNBB), to leverage on technology to facilitate E-Payments.
Upon successful completion of this discussion, some of their beneficiaries under programmes including, Ipelegeng; HandStamping and Village Development Committees (VDC), will be paid through the e-wallet bulk payment system by October 2021. So far, the Kgatleng District Council has managed to collect just over P1.7 million against a target of P3.4 million, which translates to approximately 51 percent. “This clearly states that some of the activities that we had planned to do within this financial year will be affected as we depend on this income to drive the Council mandate,” Molokwe said.
He added that the Council is going to be forced to make use of what they have at their disposal and put stringent measures in place to deliver on their mandate in a cost effective manner.
Meanwhile, Molokwe said the Council has registered a total of 3396 beneficiaries under social safety nets. This includes 1427 destitute persons, 896 needy students, 23 Community Home based care clients, 90 Children in need of Care and 960 Orphans.
The clients are assisted with basic necessities, which includes food, bedding, shelter, medical expenses, clothing, transport fares and psychotherapy among others.
The Ipelegeng programme has so far received a disbursement of P7.9 million, 60 percent of the total budget allocations for the programme. The total expenditure on the programme currently stands at P5.3 million. According to Molokwe, a cumulative total of 9 432 Ipelegeng beneficiaries were engaged from April 2021 to end of August 2021. This is against the projected 9 455 beneficiaries which represents 99.8 percent uptake. “Beneficiaries continue to be engaged in carrying out labour projects as well as assisting in the cleaning and disinfection of classrooms at all our primary and secondary schools across the district,” Molokwe said, adding that the programme is also undertaking implementation of eight technical projects from the previous financial years.