29 Jun 2014

Kgatleng District Council chairperson, Mr Tona Mooketsi says time has come for citizens to share cost with government to resolve cost recovery challenges faced by the Ministry of Lands and Housing.

Mr Mooketsi was responding to a presentation on land servicing programme by the principal engineer in the department of technical services under the Ministry of Lands and Housing, Mr Frans Bale during a full council meeting.

He said cost recovery measures put in place in urban areas should be extended to villages situated in tribal land, adding that government had long been servicing the land for free.

“We can’t afford to do everything for free. We don’t want to be a state of social work. The citizens have the ability to meet government half-way. We all know we have underprivileged people but those who can’t afford to meet the government half way will be catered for and taken care of through the Social and Community Development (S&CD) department,” Mr Mooketsi said.

He said government is spending a lot of money in servicing land that sometimes people fail to utilise, noting that by enforcing cost recovery measures, people allocated tribal land plots will also feel the loss if they failed to use the allocated land.

Mr Mooketsi advised that tribal, state and free land should be merged and controlled by one statute to ease monitoring.

In his presentation, Mr Bale said since land servicing covers tribal land, cost recovery measures should be applied.

In future, he said they intend to work jointly with Water Utilities Corporation and Botswana Power Corporation regarding land servicing plans. “Sole mentality of planning must be discouraged and plans for other stakeholders must be incorporated,” said Mr Bale.

Mr Bale said selling of plots has become a challenge, adding that such a move has resulted in change of land use thus tempering with designs.

He said his department provides infrastructure services in accordance with the approved basic standards to improve lives of Batswana. ENDS