17 Feb 2015

The poverty eradication programme needs support from other stakeholders in order to be successful, says Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Mr Phillip Makgalemele.

Speaking during a kgotla meeting in Mogobane on February 16, Mr Makgalemele said poverty eradication was a tough mission that needed the involvement of all, adding that government alone would not succeed. 

Therefore, he said programme beneficiaries, community leaders and project implementers needed to play their part and  ensure that government achieved its mandate of doing away with absolute poverty by the 2016/17 financial year.

Furthermore, he said government had come up with about 45 poverty eradication programmes. However, he said each community was allowed to come up with programmes, which they deemed sustainable in addition to those already drafted by government.

Assistant Minister Makgalemele also encouraged communities to form cooperatives. He said multi cooperatives could employ a large number of the community members hence assist in eradicating poverty and job creation. 

Mr Makgalemele said according to Botswana Investment and Trade Centre, the South East District could support industries such as agricultural projects, clay, tourism and manufacturing among others.

Therefore, he encouraged the district communities to take advantage of the environment they were living in and come up with businesses. On others issues, he applauded the community for coming up with some programmes aimed at developing their livelihoods such as the Mogobane Irrigation Scheme. Mr Makgalemle said government had released about P10 million for the Mogobane Irrigation Scheme to be resuscitated.

Earlier when updating about the irrigation scheme, the chairperson of GaMalete Development Trust, Mr Lawrence Magosi said they had already started to resuscitate the project. He said they had started fencing the 120 hectare field and that they would use the area for horticulture and dairy farming.

However, he said horticulture which formed phase of the whole project would only occupy about 20 hectares. One of the residents appealed to the assistant minister to lobby for the ceasing of automatic promotion of students. Also, Ms Marea Olesitse said students who had not performed well at lower levels could not be expected to perform miracles at higher levels. 

Other residents complained that they had not been briefed about the Mogobane Irrigation Scheme project. ENDS