29 May 2014

The shortfall of suppliers in the South East District has affected the effective rolling out of the Livestock Management and Infrastructure Development (LIMID) programme.

The principal district officer for development, Ms Kgomotso Kesianye said this during the council session on May 26. According to Ms Kesianye, the problem affected mostly implementation of the small stock and Tswana chickens.

She said in the whole district, 511 small stock projects were approved for funding but only 243 had been implemented, while under the Tswana chickens, 78 projects were approved for funding and only 25 were implemented.

“This backlog is due to unavailability of suppliers for required animals within the district which shows market availability within the agric sector,” she added.

She said this also showed that there was a gap in the market that the district could tap upon, adding that plans would be made through the local economic development strategies for this to be addressed.

However, she said in the meantime the LIMID programme had been advised to explore procuring in neighbouring districts to ascertain that beneficiaries were assisted timely. Ms Kesianye further pointed that applicants seemed to prefer small stock as they said goats and sheep were more profitable.

Furthermore, she said animal husbandry projects, fodder support and borehole drilling were least implemented as beneficiaries failed to raise their portion of contributions.

Nevertheless, the LIMID programme, she said, had benefited more people when compared to other programmes such as horticulture and Youth Development Fund (YDF).

As for YDF, she said out of the 89 projects funded under the project since its inception in 2009 in the district, only 60 were functional while 20 projects had collapsed.

Ms Kesianye blamed the project collapse on lack of commitment by the youth and high rentals for business and operational space.

However, she said the department has been advised to liaise with other stakeholders to improve on monitoring and evaluation of projects. Also, she said there are only 54 projects established under the horticultural programme in the district, which shows that the programme uptake is low given the availability of the market.

In another presentation, principal economist in the council, Ms Seipone Matlapeng when presenting the district annual development plan, said only minimal projects had been funded for the 2014/15 financial year.

“No new projects have been funded except for a few, especially flagship programmes which have a specific ceiling annually,” adding that these are mainly poverty eradication projects. Further, she said other projects such as construction of education facilities, construction of four staff houses, procurement of furniture and gravelling of two access roads will be carried in the district.

During comments, councillors from Tlokweng sub district complained of the one sided allocations of projects as there were no new projects mentioned in their sub district. ENDS