31 May 2015

Poverty eradication cases should be treated with utmost urgency, Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration has said.

Addressing Southern District Council (SDC) executive leadership in Kanye on May 26, Mr Dikgang Makgalemele raised a concern that some prospective beneficiaries were approved as way back as 2012 but were yet to be assisted.

“That is tantamount to denying poor people the right to be assisted by government, but we cannot address poverty with the business as usual kind of attitude,” he warned. He explained that government has set a target to have eradicated abject poverty among Batswana by March 2017 thus urged all the responsible ministries to pace up. 

He also revealed that backlog should be addressed by end of June this year. Mr Makgalemele was also concerned that stakeholders in the poverty eradication exercise were somewhat not on the same level of understanding. 

Thus he stressed the need to have a coordinated environment to address poverty. “Poverty is like HIV/AIDS you are either infected or affected, it has to be everybody’s business,” he called.

The minister further challenged service providers to be proactive when assisting People Living with Disabilities (PLWDs).  He explained that it was important for officers to exercise flexibility as much as they could to ensure the less privileged Batswana were not left out in the cold.

Mr Makgalemele, also Member of Parliament (MP) for the Shoshong constituency urged officers to encourage needy children to take their studies seriously and use education as a stepping stone to graduate from abject poverty. 

He said many people who came from economically challenged families have used education to change their lives for the better.

Meanwhile, Mr Makgalemele has commended the SDC for the initiative to attach a waiver to all poverty eradication procurements with a view to avoid unnecessary delays.  He said the decision should have been taken at central government level as well.

On other issues, Mr Makgalemele urged government departments and parastatals to share information on the available government programmes, initiatives and interventions in their respective ministries. 

He said some Batswana were not aware of the programmes which denied them the opportunity to benefit.

“Share your budget information with every village, so they know how much has been budgeted for them even how much was spent on the villages in previous years should be made available to them.

 I know that some might deliberately keep information to themselves with a view to take advantage of the planned projects and that is corruption,” he called.

Mr Makgalemele emphasised that government departments and parastatals should use their procurement budgets to support government funded projects to keep them on their feet.

Deputy SDC chairperson, Mr Aleck Seametso had earlier in his brief complained that government departments somewhat lacked coordination in the fight against poverty. He cited a case where SDC had wanted to build a house for a destitute person but landboard would not allocate them a plot urgently. 

He also complained that some beneficiaries who were assisted with goats have yet to receive vaccines. Mr Seametso also raised a concern that poverty eradication projects in the districts were not being monitored.

However, Ngwaketse Landboard chairman, Mr Mosimanegape Mophuting was adamant that they had a special dispensation for the less privileged Batswana. He cited that PLWDs were allocated plots on the spot. Ends