Caswell Tlali
MASERU — Maseru City Council (MCC) workers on Friday urged Local Government Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing to ensure the council becomes autonomous from the government.
Speaking on behalf of council workers the MCC health and environment director, ’Maseitsiro Khooe, said lack of autonomy in running council affairs was seriously affecting the quality of services offered to Maseru’s 300 000 residents.
Khooe also revealed that the council was broke as the government which occupies most offices in Maseru has not been paying rates for the past 23 years.
She said if the council becomes autonomous this will speed up service delivery as they will not have to wait on the minister to approve their budget.
“The money allocated to us by the central government is not enough to run this big municipality,” Khooe said. “Is this not the time for the MCC to be autonomous?”
Khooe said the council did not have the capacity to deliver efficient services to residents leading to the public’s complaints that it was “useless”.
“How can we be expected to be efficient when we are not trained and we do not have equipment?
“The workers are there but they are not capacitated to meet the needs of the public,” she said.
“It is unfortunate that some of our skilled and educated workers are leaving for greener pastures, others are retiring while others just leave because they are not motivated.
“There has not been a salary review for years, directors in all key offices starting with the office of the town clerk are acting and the vacancies are not filled, people are not promoted despite their long service at the council or their newly acquired educational qualifications,” she said.
Khooe said it is strange that the MCC has powers to allocate land in Maseru but it does not have its own plot to build its headquarters.
She said the planning department has good plans for the municipality but they cannot be implemented because of lack of funds.
The planning office is painfully understaffed, with only three people who face a colossal task of serving the entire city and its outskirts.
Khooe said there were also people in Maseru who were refusing to adjust the sizes of their pieces of land to make way for developments.
The council was facing a tough time dealing with these people as they are understaffed, Khooe said.
She said the parks and recreation department “cannot erect a mere nursery because the finance department always says there are no funds”.
“Our parks belie the claim that Maseru is Lesotho’s capital, the pride of Basotho,” she said.
Talking about her department, health and environment, she said they were failing to carry out health inspections at supermarkets and other small grocery shops.
“You can just imagine the number of shops in Maseru and how a few staff in my office can successfully inspect them all within a reasonable time. It is hard work,” she said.
“It is not surprising that we inspect a supermarket once or twice in a year.”
Her office, she said, has only two inspectors.
She said the most difficult job in her office is rooting out big business people masquerading as street vendors.
“They are unfairly competing with genuine street vendors but we are not able to deal with the problem because we are understaffed and incapacitated,” she said.
All these things can be dealt with effectively if the government makes the MCC autonomous and allow the council to decide on its budget and run its own affairs without any administrative or political interference, she said.
Metsing said he agreed with the MCC workers that the council should be autonomous and that the government should pay ground rates.
“The central government should indeed pay for the services it gets from the MCC so that you will be able to meet the demands of the people of Maseru,” Metsing said.
“This council is important because it is the face of Lesotho. The Maseru people and businesses should benefit from the levies paid to their council.”
He said it boggles the mind why the MCC has to pay for electricity and water when it is supposed to be the supplier.
These things are supposed to be paid to the council by the people under its jurisdiction, he said.
“In other jurisdictions where I have been this is how councils get funds so that they can be able to provide services to the people,” he said.