Mayor urges change to Act
LAUTOKA mayor John Hicks called on the Government to speed up amendments to the Local Government Act so that municipal councils could overcome problems such as rate collections.
This, according to a report in The Fiji Times on February 27 1987.
The mayor said the problem in rates collection was largely due to the Government’s inability to speed up the amendments to the Act which would make rates collection more effective.
Mr Hicks statements were made during discussions at the monthly council meeting.
That year also marked the 10th anniversary of Lautoka as a city.
“There are many other problems that would be taken care of in the proposed amendments and I can only request the minister responsible to please introduce the amendments quickly before most of the municipal councils run into financial problems,” he said.
On other issues, Mr Hicks said the city was suffering from traffic problems and the long term solution would be municipal police and traffic wardens with stronger traffic legislation.
He said looking at the city’s growth, the population over previous 10 years had increased from 25,000 to more than 30,000 and the council’s recurrent budget rose from $900,000 to more than $2 million.
He said the number of rate assessments increased from 2797 to about 5500, although the total area remained at 1100 hectares.
The rating valuation of the city jumped from $31 million to almost $100 million, he said.
Mr Hicks said the city was drifting away from being the commercial centre of the Western Division to a large industrial city.
And while the sugar industry would continue to be the backbone of the city, it would benefit from diversified industries as well, he added.
Among the developments he identified were the pine mill at Drasa, upgrading of the Kings Wharf under the Japanese aid into a fishing wharf and the major upgrading of the Lautoka port.
He said the different developments made him confident the city would expand, but he hoped that as in the past the expansion would be controlled and planned.