08 Dec 2016

Assistant Minister of Local Government and Rural Development says the annual cost of Ipelegeng programme has been increasing over the years, but in the current financial year there was a slight decrease from P635million to P612million.

Answering a question in Parliament, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso said for the last three financial years, the expenditure has been P613million (2016/17), P636million (2015/16) and P634million (2014/15) respectively.

She indicated that the initial Labour Intensive Public Works Programme was intended to provide short term support for citizens during drought years in the rural areas.

“Due to the recurrence of drought and limited employment opportunities, government decided to run the ipelegeng programme on a permanent basis,” she said, adding that the long term sustainability of the programme depends on among others the favourable budgetary situation, job creation initiatives and uptake of other government programmes.

Ms Tshireletso further said the programme’s objective is to provide temporary relief whilst looking for sustainable employment alternatives.

“There are other programmes such as CEDA, Poverty Eradication, Youth Development Fund, LIMID, ISPAAD etc that are geared towards sustainable job creation and poverty eradication,” she said.

She noted that currently there is no evidence in place indicating how the programme has affected the spirit of self-reliance and nonetheless, Ipelegeng has the potential to complement self-reliance as the projects are initiated and implemented by communities depending on their needs.

She further said that  ipelegeng programme is designed in such a way that beneficiaries should rotate and graduate from the programme as they take up other emerging opportunities.

“However,  the ministry is continually exploring innovative ways for graduation from social protection programmes including ipelegeng,” said Ms Tshireletso, also adding that to date 21 beneficiaries have benefited from economic empowerment programmes in Boteti East constituency.

She concluded that her ministry does not have evidence on the extent to which the programme creates a dependency syndrome.

Member of Parliament for Boteti East Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe had asked the minister on the relevance of Ipelegeng programme for the past three years looking at whether the annual cost of the programme has increased or decreased, if the programme is sustainable in the long run, whether the ministry is considering changing it to develop sustainable job creation initiatives, how this programme affected the spirit of self-reliance that Batswana used to have, how many people graduated from it in the Boteti East villages and if the programme creates a dependency syndrome. ENDS