09 Aug 2016

A Presidential Inspectoral Task Team member, Mr Johnnie Swartz, says beneficiaries of poverty eradication programme and implementing officers should work cooperatively to ensure success of the initiative.

Addressing beneficiaries ahead of a tour of villages in Letlhakeng Sub-district, Mr Swartz raised concern that beneficiaries and officers only seemed to pull together at the initial stages of projects, only for the relationship to deteriorate with time.

Mr Swartz therefore explained that funding was not the only vital part of a project.

The project also had to produce the desired results. He also indicated that one of the objectives of the task team was to find out how much Batswana knew and utilised various government initiatives  geared towards eradicating poverty as well as whether these initiatives were achieving their intended objectives.

He, therefore, said the main objective of their tour was to get feedback and recommendations from beneficiaries on where and how the programmes could be improved. 

The poverty pradication coordinator in Kweneng District, Mr Gaotlhobogwe Kwelagobe, applauded women for utilising poverty eradication programmes in large numbers.

He said they had already assessed and approved 4 004 people in the sub-district for various programmes of which 494 had already been trained. Mr Kwelagobe said some people were funded without the need for training, which brought the total number of those funded to 1 916.

Mr Kwelagobe also indicated that a total of 182 projects were running in the sub-district, of which 19 were success stories. He said they have been given more than P4 million to address backlog eradication.

The senior assistant council secretary for Letlhakeng,  Mr Nigel Mangoye urged beneficiaries who received only a part of their project equipment to come forth to their officers so that they can be assisted. 

He also urged the beneficiaries to make a success of the initiatives while they still lasted.

For his part, superintendent in the Department of Animal Production, Mr Bakang Keinyatse indicated that in the recent past they were hampered by shortage of manpower to provide beneficiaries with the needed vaccines, but said the problem will be addressed as they were recently given a supplies officer. Ends