Africa-Press – Botswana. The North West District Council is planning to expand its income generating avenues.
Presenting recurrent budget proposals on Monday in Maun, councillor Luke Motlaleselelo, who is also the finance committee chairperson, said an income generation subcommittee was established to help the council achieve the objective.
Mr Motlaleselelo said the subcommittee was exploring the possibility of owning a concession and generating income through leasing it. He also said there was a plan to establish a credit control unit that would help the council to collect debts. He said shortage of funds for investment was the main stumbling block that contributed to low revenue collection. He also said the sale of tender documents was slow.
Mr Motlaleselelo also urged council departments to be accurate and accountable when drawing up their budget proposals to avoid being allocated funds that would end up not being utilised.
He stated that wastage could be avoided in schools and offices by ensuring that water taps were shut and electric appliances switched off after school and working hours.
The chairperson noted that the 2023/2024 recurrent budget was about P248m and that it comprised P235m and about P12m in revenue support grant and income from own sources respectively.
However, he said there was a P43m decline which translated to a 15 per cent reduction from the original budget.
He said it resulted in prioritising council needs and forgoing some projects which were provided for in the initial budget. He said a lions share of the recurrent budget would go towards personnel emoluments at over P122m and that the bulk of the money would be channelled towards payment of members’ and officers’ salaries.
He noted that the vote had increased by over P6m and that it was a six per cent growth from the last financial year.
He attributed the increase to an adjustment of officers’ salaries by five per cent. Mr Motlaleselelo said the second largest allocation went to special expenses at over P63m to finance relief of destitute, security services, school stationery, equipment, food and accommodation and refuse contracts.
In response, councillors opined that their district was a tourism destination endowed with natural resources and that it should leverage on that and hold rights to one of the concession areas to help generate income. They said public private partnerships should be explored as they had proved to be one way of generating income in other councils.
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