Nkhotakota district council has in three months, more than doubled financial independence through efficient, strategic revenue collection, an initiative that is living up to the encouragement of government’s National Local Government Financial Committee (NLGFC).
Nkhotakota’s District Commissioner (DC), Blessings Nkhoma, says plying of trade by vendors in streets ignoring flea market was a huge headache. He also says minibuses, bicycle taxi operators (Kabanza) and motor cycle taxi operators were operating in the in the streets ignoring a vacant bus depot.
This scenario had been affecting the council’s activities due to low revenue collection as some businesses were also run unregistered and unmonitored.
“Insufficient funds due to inefficient revenue collection has been affecting our budgets, including failure to pay direct our staff and settle basic bills,” said the DC.
The council resorted into developing a strategy that would engage the business operators to find out why they had been ignoring the readily established structures and educate them on the need to operate legally.
“The first step we took was to have an interface with vendors to convince them to operate their trade in the legitimately established market, and convince minibus operators, bicycle taxi operators and motorcycle taxi operators to operate from the established depot,” explained Nkhoma.
He said there had also been sensitisation campaigns through various local media platforms on the need for mutual and responsible existence between them and the council.
“When we convinced them to start operating legitimately, we developed a business register where everyone operating these businesses has been registered for ease of monitoring,” he said.
The council has collected MK38.6 million from July to August this year compared to MK17.5 million the same period last year.
The revenue returns have been from market fees from vendors, business licencing and application fees, and departure fees for transport service providers operating from the depot.
