Know your customers, municipalities urged

“KNOW the people that you serve so you would be able to do your work efficiently.” These were the sentiments expressed by the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Community Development Premila Kumar while visiting municipal councils in the Western division recently.

Minister Kumar highlighted that every ratepayer and market vendor that the council serve are important and as such every necessary detail must be gathered about them so it can ease the work conducted by the various Councils.

“Rate-profiling for every ratepayer is important as you need to know every detail that will assist in your daily work and this would also improve service delivery. “Vendor-profiling for every market vendor will provide you with the necessary information on every marker vendor that has a stall in your markets. Both exercises should be conducted in every municipalities and I expect to see a record of this during my next visit.”

The Minister stated that this records should be able to tell the various municipalities how many casual vendors are there including the electricity bills in any market.

She stressed the importance of ensuring that taxpayers’ money are utilized well and not misused. Minister Kumar also met with various business stakeholders where some proposed projects were highlighted.

“Each of these will impact you and your business positively. The government as you know has abolished business licenses. However, that does not mean there is no opportunity for you to contribute.”

“Another change that will benefit the business community is my Ministry’s commitment to reforming town and country planning.

“We will ensure that delays in approvals are a thing of the past. For too long, unnecessary bureaucracy and slow processing times was not ensuring that you get the approvals for building developments, subdivisions and zooming that you need to facilitate economic development. “Ministry staff from our western office will be undertaking processing at Ba Town Council and skilling up Ba Council staff. “Furthermore, all major developments over two-storey and $1m will be made from Suva to developers across the country.