26 Apr 2016

Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration Mr Dikgang Makgalemele has encouraged Sehithwa residents to uphold the business model of cooperatives.

Addressing a kgotla meeting in the Ngami village on Monday 25, Mr Makgalemele pointed out that cooperatives were a better method that could be used to address poverty in the area than individualised businesses.

He said cooperatives were more beneficial since they were assisted with maximum funds and were also likely to produce at a large scale.

He observed that Botswana was still importing about 124 products according to the Ministry of Trade and Industry which was an opportunity for the locals to form cooperatives that would produce such products locally.

Mr Makgalemele noted that government, through the poverty eradication programme, had injected about P4 million to assist the Lake Ngami Fishing Trust, which was expected to benefit the community of Sehithwa and surrounding areas once  in operation.

Meanwhile, the assistant minister implored the Village Development Committee and the Village Extension Team to map a way to eradicate poverty in their area.

He reminded the residents that the Poverty Eradication deadline for the country was December 2017.

“But you can make your own strategy and deadline for poverty eradication,” he said, adding that although government had introduced 45 packages under the poverty eradication programme, it was not limiting the people to come up with additional ideas.

He said in order to tackle the challenges of delays, the government had a plan to engage temporary social workers to focus exclusively on poverty eradication programmes as social and community development officers were overwhelmed by their overall work. Another intervention, he said, was to issue poverty eradication programmes beneficiaries with the necessary materials immediately after their training to avoid delays.

Furthermore, Mr Makgalemele said the funds of poverty eradication would be manned by the district officers to cut the previous red tape of channeling funds through various departments.

He also said the government was on a mission to ensure availability of market for the goods produced by the poverty eradication beneficiaries in their local communities and government departments.

Mr Makgalemele said the poverty eradication backlog which was supposed to have been eliminated by end of the past financial year had been moved to June 2016, for all those who had been assessed to have received their packages.

The Assistant Minister also informed the Sehithwa residents about the role of his ministry and the 10-point-agenda, among others.

In his remarks, Kgosi Boitiro Dithapo of Sehithwa expressed hope that his village would benefit from the recently introduced Economic Stimulus Programme, adding that many projects planned for Sehithwa, such as a civic centre, had been shelved following the world recession.ENDS