02 Feb 2015

Residents of Gungwe have called on government to consider reticulating electricity through-out the village. 

They made the plea during a kgotla meeting addressed by the MP for Tati West constituency, Mr Biggie Butale in their village on Thursday (Jan. 29).

Speaking on behalf of fellow residents, the chairperson of the Village Development Committee (VDC) Mr Smart Boy informed MP Butale that only a small portion of their village had electricity while the rest of it remained in darkness.

Mr Boy said such a situation was not desirable as every villager had the right to enjoy access to services such electricity. The VDC chairperson also implored government to address the lack of access to potable water by many of the village’s residents.

He observed that since the disconnection of public standpipes, some residents had not enjoyed access to water as the tokens with which they were to draw water had become no-functional.

On a different matter, Mr Boy complained about the bad state of roads linking their village with nearby villages such as Zwenshambe, Gambule and Mbalambi. He pointed out that the roads had not been graded in a long time.

Commenting after MP Butale’s address, another resident Mr Jabavu Makafiri complained that there were not enough farm implements allocated to their village to help those who wanted to benefit from the ISPAAD programme. This, he said had impacted negatively on their efforts to fully benefit from the programme.

For his part, Mr Akunlandu Lekgetho thanked government for the various programmes aimed at uplifting the lives of ordinary citizens. He said as a guitarist he had been competing during the president’s art competitions and had been able to support his family through the proceeds from the competition.

Earlier during his address, Mr Butale had informed residents that time had come for government to empower citizens economically.

He said it was sad that tenders for mega government projects continued to be awarded to big international companies thus denying Batswana the opportunity to both contribute to the development of their country as well as enjoying some level of economic empowerment.

He said the reasoning that local companies could not be trusted with carrying out big projects because they lacked the capability to implement them was no longer plausible as even the preferred international companies had of late been delivering poorly-implemented projects.

Mr Butale also informed Gungwe residents that his dream was for the entire North East District to become a centre of excellence in service delivery and local governance.

He said this would require the collaboration of all stakeholders He said the role of the public in achieving this would be to fully and effectively use government programmes availed to them. He said members of the public would also be expected to not accept shoddy service from public officers. 

The public servants on the other hand would be expected to deliver services to the best of their ability and to always go an extra mile in the execution of their duties. ENDS