14 Feb 2017

Parliament has been informed that a total of 18 135 projects under Poverty Eradication Programme are currently performing while 1 207 projects are excelling. This was said by the Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Thato Kwerepe in response to a parliamentary question. Mr Kwerepe said 929 projects collapsed, and attributed this to shortage of water, unaffordable water bills, lack of commitment on the part of the beneficiaries, lack of intensive entrepreneurial skills among beneficiaries resulting in challenges of effectively marketing their products and market saturation of some packages as well as poor mentoring of beneficiaries, among others. Furthermore, he said 126 beneficiaries whose projects had collapsed were assisted to resuscitate their businesses, and most of those assisted were Agricultural projects that collapsed due to circumstances beyond beneficiaries’ control such as an outbreak of diseases. “In other instances, beneficiaries are assisted to resuscitate and sustain their projects through psyco-social support services given to them during mentoring visits,” he said. In addition, the assistant minister stated that monitoring of projects funded under the Poverty Eradication Programme was done at district level by implementing departments in collaboration with the District Development Committees under the guidance of the district commissioners. Mr Kwerepe said the success of this programme requires full participation of the district leadership, including, but not limited to district agricultural coordinators, tribal authorities, council secretaries, chief community development officers, home economics officers, gender officers, councillors, land board secretaries, VDCs and CBOs. He also noted that the village extension teams form part of the monitoring team and give feedback to district reporting structure. “Such arrangement is crucial to ensure that individual household performance tracking is done as this forms a basis for assessment to determine appropriate interventions if need be,” he said. Member of Parliament for Gaborone North, Mr Haskins Nkaigwa had asked the minister how projects funded under the Poverty Eradication Programme were monitored and how many were currently performing well per district. He had also wanted to know how many projects had collapsed and reasons thereof and how many beneficiaries had been assisted to resuscitate their businesses. ENDS