01 Dec 2016

Residents of Tewane and neighbouring settlements have been encouraged to take advantage of electricity in their area.

Deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security, Mr Nchidzi Mmolawa said this during launch of the ESP 34 Villages Electrification project in Tewane recently.

Mr Mmolawa said this was an opportunity to implement their business ideas that remained docile due to unavailability of power in their area.

He said this was also the chance to upgrade agricultural processes to make them more efficient given the fact that they now had electricity and to explore other business options that might had been limited by lack of electricity supply.

He said it was expected that the livelihood of Tewane community would increase in many folds following electrification of the village.

He said the government under the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) initiative through Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) was electrifying 10 new villages and extending electrical networks in 24 villages from 2015/16 financial year, being Phase 1 of the ESP Rural Electrification.

The villages to be electrified first are, Tewane, Mmatseta, Sehonou, Kutamogoree, Sexaxa, Lorolwana, Samane, Moremi, Batlhotlogo and Gakgatla, he said.

 

“The objective of this project was to improve the lives of the general populace in these villages by making access to electricity for domestic, farming and commercial use much easier,” he said.

Further, he explained that in 1975, the government instituted the Rural Electrification Programme with the assistance of the Swedish International Development Agency.

He noted that from then on multimillion pula projects had been implemented through grid extension to an excess of P1 billion funding by the government. To facilitate effective implementation of these projects, he said, BPC had been given the execution mandate.

Mr Mmolawa said under this scheme customers would form a syndicate and share the cost of extension to their households.

He said this was further enhanced to improve uptake by government through a standardized cost connection of P5 000 through the introduction of the National Electricity Standard Connection scheme in 2010.

He said the scheme was applicable countrywide and allows customers to connect at an affordable cost as long as they are within 500 meters radius from transformer or source.

He said Tewane Primary School benefited during the second phase.

For his part, BPC CEO Dr Stefan Schwarzfischer said rural electrification forms part of the government’s agenda to develop the country’s rural areas such that they are adequately resourced to permit for various economic operations that can contribute to the growth of the country’s gross domestic product.

Dr Schwarzfischer said the livelihoods of citizens was dependent on the country’s development programs that support various initiatives that could contribute to self-sustenance thereby curbing the possibility of social ills that could result from under development.

He said government had to date invested more than P1.3 billion in electrifying rural villages with the biggest project implemented in the period 2007 to 2010 through electrification of 130 villages and further network extensions in 34 villages at a cost of P785 million.

He said as a result of such investment efforts, 376 villages and localities out of 512 had been electrified, the BPC customer base is now 400 000 customers with rural connections making 72 per cent of that figures. ENDS