05 Mar 2017

MAUN - Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Thato Kwerepe has implored North West District poverty eradication programme implementers and coordinators to offer relevant advice to members of the public to avoid project failure.
He said this at a consultative meeting with North West district poverty eradication project implementers in Maun on March 2.
Mr Kwerepe, who is also MP for Ngami, said that projects failed because implementers gave out projects to people who had no desire and skills to own such kind of projects or who relied on other people to manage the projects.
“As project implementers, we should not make these projects so difficult for beneficiaries and we should not disassociate ourselves from the programmes because it will disadvantage the economy,” he said.
Mr Kwerepe advised project implementers to go all out and benchmark in countries such as South Africa, Tanzania and observe how they operated their businesses.
He cited lack of project monitoring and evaluation by the implementers as one major factor that led to poverty eradication projects collapsing.
For his part, North West District Council deputy chairperson, Mr Lathang Molonda explained that there was fear among the public to venture into businesses they were not familiar with hence crowding of similar businesses in one area.ENDS