By JAMES APA GUMUNO
Mt Hagen City Council received K210,000 in national grants from the Western Highlands provincial government last Friday after their illegal protest last Thursday at the provincial headquarters.
City manager Richard Culligan said yesterday that this money was not enough to last them till the end of this year.
Mr Culligan said about K150,000 would be used to pay his 130 employees, who missed out on the five fortnights.
He said that they expect K350,000 in national grants in the last quarter of this year but this money was reduced.
He said that the money given would be allocated to settle outstanding dues and would last them for another two fortnights but there is no money to meet their operational cost and settle other outstanding arrears.
Mr Culligan said 40% of the total K2.3 million budgets, which they normally collected annually from the land rates, were declared illegal by the National Court.
He said that the City Council desperately needed support from the provincial government and local MPs from the province to properly look after the city.
He said the city was the face of the province and it needed support from the concerned authorities to keep the image of the province clean and tidy at all times.
Mr Culligan said that it was not good pointing figures at each other and instead concern authorities must come together and help address the problems.
He also said he did not know when the provincial executive council (PEC) would meet and delegated powers to collect land rates back to the City Council.
He said about K1 million they normally collected through land rates was stopped by the National Court mid this year because when the old Organic Law was changed, the delegated power was also changed.
Mr Culligan said when PEC met and passed a resolution and gave delegated powers back to the City Council, then they would start collecting the land rates.
Otherwise, they will still wait for the PEC to give them the power before they go ahead and collect the land rates.
Meanwhile, he said that they would stage a peaceful protest march after two weeks, adding that they served the notice of intention to stage a protest march to the provincial police commander yesterday.