30 Aug 2015

Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration Mr Dikgang Makgalemele has bemoaned the slow uptake and huge numbers of people still to be assisted with poverty eradication packages.

Addressing Kweneng district leadership forum recently, he said government was concerned that prospective beneficiaries are yet to be assessed and trained before receiving funding.

The assistant minister said government was targeting March 2017 to have ended abject poverty and was determined to live to promises made prior to 2014 elections and as such officers on the ground should all work towards that goal.

He said this was possible if all ministries and responsible stakeholders urgently work hard towards ending the backlog cases by end of September.

Mr Makgalemele also expressed a concern over huge numbers of people rejected which he said may cause more reassessment and those disqualified linked or directed to relevant programmes such as cooperatives, YDF and ISPAAD. He said government has decided to employ temporary social workers to speed up the assessment of beneficiaries.

In the end , the minister urged the forum to encourage beneficiaries to form cooperatives which he said were more financially rewarding and stand to benefit from government mentoring through the Sebele based cooperatives department.

He said it was not true that Batswana shun to work as groups, citing Metshelo groups and other societies which Batswana are cooperating in.

Mr Makgalemele said cooperatives could save a lot of costs as many people could be assisted from the combined resources since the P15 000 threshold for poverty eradication assistance could not cover all beneficiaries individually.“Cooperatives should be the way to go looking at the huge numbers showing interests versus the P15 000 threshold for individuals. Ends