Ngoh Ajong Sylvanus Dobgima, Lord
Mayor of the Bali Council has disclosed that the Council has taken Burns Construction
Company to Court. This was during the Bali Council Session convened to examine
and adopt the 2016 Administrative and Management Accounts for approval by the
supervisory authority on Friday August 4, 2017.
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| Lord Mayor Ngoh Ajong Sylvanus Dobgima in red during session |
He said this was because Burns
had broken their pipelines while carrying out construction work within the
Municipality. He further explained that Burns had equally been exploiting
laterite within the Municipality for its works and nothing had been paid for it.
Even when they entered a gentleman agreement for the company to pay a token of
FCFA 3 million to the council, the company didn’t still meet up with its own
side of the bargain. The only option remaining he said was to take this company
to court.
While acknowledging that the water and
electricity problem was to an extent an inherited one, the mayor said the
problem had been compounded by the prevailing situation. The Company that carried
out the evaluation work for the costing of the displacement of pipelines had
not yet been paid and that funds were still being awaited from Yaounde. He however
stated that the awaited Solar Panel Project would take care of the Electricity
Supply problem.
In a welcome address presented by the
Mayor, he said “in reality the Bali Council Administrative Account for the year
2016 Financial Year stood in revenue at the sum of FCFA 239.842.105 and in
expenditure at the sum of FCFA 236,537,105. These figures produced a positive balance
of FCFA 3,305,041.” He however added that “if we compare these figures with
those of 2015, it would be realised that the revenue had dropped by 13,536,388.
This indicates that the account has reduced drastically. I wish to say that
much effort is being made to step up revenue collection.”
This drop was dominantly attributed to
the socio-political crises in the North West and South West Regions. This notwithstanding,
suggestions on ways to increase revenue collection were aplenty. The first
suggestion was that of a daily market. With the opening of the Market on a
daily bases, it is believed that revenues would be boosted. It was also
suggested that Tax teams in the collection of revenue needed help from security
operatives to effectively carry out revenue collection efforts. Meantime other councilors
in session suggested that effective revenue collection has to go with sensitization.
Without sensitization, efforts to collect revenue forcefully could escalate
into violence due to ignorance on the goals behind revenue collections.
Among the problems presented was that
of the Cattle Market which still had to go operational. The delay in the cattle
market project was attributed to the lack of collaboration from the Ardo: traditional leader of the local Bororo and Fulani tribes that dominate
cattle rearing.
Due to the multiplicity of needs of
the municipality, some councilors called on elites from Bali to be approached
for support in development projects The session ended with all unanimously
pledging to put in more efforts to make sure that better results will be
achieved in the future in Bali.
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