20 Nov 2016

All government funded projects must make the community happy, says the Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Frans Van Der Westhuizen.

The assistant minister said this after touring Gabane internal roads project, which is at the reviewing and auditing of designs stage.

“These are community projects and they are meant for the people. When we do designs they have to be community friendly,” said Mr Van Der Westhuizen.

He said the project consultant must ensure that designs covered all aspects of the project for government to deliver a complete project on budget that satisfied the community. The assistant minister encouraged the consultant to profile the construction site to ensure that compensation due to the impact of the project runs smoothly.

Assistant Minister Van Der Westhuizen said there was need to look into cheaper road designs saying some of the internal roads were overdesigned which lead to them being expensive for government.

The deputy permanent secretary in the local government ministry, Ms Halakangwa Mbulai, said there was need to ensure that the project ran smoothly during implementation.

Therefore she highlighted the need for those earmarked for relocation to start moving so that the project goes on as envisaged.

She cited relocation as one of the impediments to projects success saying sometimes the contractor will be on site waiting for relocations thereby resulting in project delays and costs escalations.

“We are going to work on a very tight budget, it will be unfortunate if we scope down the project,” she added.

She advised the consultant to ensure that issues of drainage were taken care of to ensure that rainy seasons do not result in homestead submerged in water.

Kweneng District Council chief civil and mechanical engineering officer Mr Gaborone Phiri said the project review works is for the upgrading of 21.12 km roads network and associated storm water drainage system.

In addition, the works include street lighting of 10 km of selected roads as well as construction of a mini bus rank in Gabane.

Mr Phiri said they were in the process of consulting property owners who will be affected by the project. “So far approximately 226 properties have been affected and 15 of those are likely to be totally relocated,” he added.

He further added that the road leading to Tloaneng has been left out of the project works as it belongs to the ministry of transport and communications.BOPA