The Mayor of Francistown, James Kgalajwe, has called for joint efforts to try and combat the spiralling number of murder and rape cases in the city, which he said are taking a disturbing direction.
 Addressing a full council meeting on Monday, the Mayor implored the councillors to take deliberate action to arrest the situation.
“There is need for us to realize that our social function and societal networks are failing to detect and prevent these criminal activities. I am appealing to you to have joint efforts to stage frequent campaigns against these criminal activities,” he said.
Kgalajwe added that during a recent retreat they had in Palapye, their gender committee developed strategies that will address gender-based violence, adding that gender violence in many cases results in murder.
Kgalajwe reminded the councillors that they are duty bound to teach their electorates to report cases of gender violence so that they get attended to before they result in killings.
“There is already an action plan which will be presented in the council session for adoption regarding gender based violence,” he added.
Touching on the Francistown City Council budget, the Mayor revealed that the council is currently running at an ailing budget. He said that out of their recurrent budget, 55 percent goes to the personnel emoluments while 45 percent is left for operations.
“This, therefore, means that we need to put more effort on our priority areas with this limited budget. We should strive to strengthen our methods of generating income so that we are able to sustain ourselves,” the Mayor said.
He announced that it was impressive to note that the city was able to get funding for two projects, being the construction of the Tonota- Francistown Road and construction of the Shashe Mooke Bridge.
He conceded that there are other pressing issues of development in the city that need to be addressed, saying that FCC decided to delegate a team of councillors to meet with several ministries concerning those issues.
“I am grateful to inform this house that the assignment has been done; however, the feedback that I have is that there are no funds to implement our request. For other issues that do not necessarily need a lot of resources, we were advised accordingly and a full report will be communicated to you in due course,” he said.
The Mayor further raised concern over waste management in the city, saying that they had not been able to meet their targets.
He said that it is sad to note that the city is overwhelmed by refuse and litter, adding that the major problem had been due to unavailability of resources such as refuse compactor trucks.
“Fixing the compactor trucks brings a challenge of spares leading to prolonged grounding of the vehicles. It is, therefore, pertinent that we should device strategic ways to respond to the situation and one of those options would be getting new trucks,” Kgalajwe said.
