Botswana: Tonota District Council is hosting a 4-day Management Retreat for the district council employees. The event was hosted under the theme “Forging ahead as a united front towards service excellence” in Cresta Botsalo, Palapye.
The event was hosted with the aim of creating a high quality Council Strategic plan for the 2024/25 financial year. The management wants the members of the council to remain dedicated to providing their best inputs into the initiative.
The Council Secretary for Tonota District Council, Thupayamodimo Okaile delivered an opening address at the retreat. In her words, she talked about the significance of the retreat event and shared some glimpses of the event.
Okaile advised all to remain focused throughout the retreat and strive towards contributing effectively to the development of the plan. She urged them to learn from the mistakes of the previous financial year and improve.
“We all know that we have not done well in the 2023/24 for project execution and it is upon us to turnaround the situation this year. Let us assess challenges we faced and come up with mitigation measures that can work best for us” said the Council Secretary.
The Council Secretary also took the opportunity to reflect on the performance for the previous year. Okaile highlighted the challenges that they had faced including,
Late procurements
Failure to prepare end-of-activity reports for 2022/2023
Failure to prepare procurement plan for 2023/24
She noted that these are some of the factors that led to the Council’s underperformance in the past year. Thupayamodimo Okaile said this is unacceptable and called on Managers to identify time wasters in the processes.
The managers were subsequently asked to come up with comprehensive resolutions to address the challenges to ensure service excellence. The Council Secretary acknowledged the challenge posed by limited resources available to them.
However, she urged them to use the limited resources to achieve maximum results, also stressed on teamwork in service and change how things have been done. Okaile gave more emphasis on importance of stakeholder engagements and soliciting feedback from clients.
They can do this through customer satisfaction survey forms for improvement of service delivery. She advised all to incorporate the retreat theme in their work throughout the year.