15 Feb 2016

The councillor for Tsopeng North, Mr Gofaone Kedise has pleaded with the Ipelegeng programme coordinator to review the employment quota to match the vastness of specific areas.


Cllr Kedise made the plea during a special full council session after a briefing on the Ipelegeng programme budget proposal for 2016/17.


Information given to the house indicated that the employment quota has been increased from 821 for the 2015/16  to 851 for the 2016/17 financial year.
He said some small populated wards have more employees enrolled on the programme compared to other wards which have more unemployed people and yet a large scope of work.


He advised the officer responsible for implementing and monitoring the programme to bear in mind the scope of work for various wards when enrolling people.


Cllr Kedise said it has come to his attention that programme implementers enroll many people while their scope of work does not require such large numbers while in other areas the scope of work would be massive  but they would enroll few employees.


Another speaker, Woodhall councillor, Mr Molaodi Mantle said Ipelegeng employees need close supervision as it was becoming a habit for others not to turn up for duty, but get paid at the end of month.
He also said those in Ward Development Committees (WDC’s) tend to give preference over their committee members sidelining other community members.


He advised that those in WDC’s should serve for at least six months while the other six months was used to sign up other community members for fairness sake since the programme runs for 12 months.


Earlier in his presentation, Lobatse Town Council, principal economic planner, Mr Boingotlo Tirelo said the Lobatse District budget for 2016/17 has been reduced by P400 000 from the P8 872 316 ceiling due to financial constraints.


He said for the financial year 2016/17 they have proposed to concentrate on projects such as vegetation control, litter picking, desilting of drains and culverts, street sweeping, construction of a guard house, construction of a disaster management storeroom and green scorpion through Ipelegeng programme.

He said the above projects would have 85 supervisors and 766 unskilled and skilled  labour  which has been budgeted at P5 596 200 while P75 000  goes to skilled labour.


Responding to councillor’s questions and comments, Mr Tirelo said the office could not increase the employment quota for the programme as it was a directive from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development.


He however said they could look into the issue of employees being juggled between wards to assist at other wards where the scope of work was larger. Ends