14 Jun 2017

Kgalagadi District Council chairperson Mr Justice Nkwane says the council will focus on providing sufficient water in settlements and villages, monitoring of government programmes to ensure their success in improving livelihoods of communities and constructing internal roads.

In his opening speech at commencement of the district’s full council meeting recently, Mr Nkwane  announced the construction of small stock abattoir that would help in creating employment and business opportunities for locals.

He emphasised that it was through team work that they could be able to successfully implement and deliver services to the communities.

Mr Nkwane said that the district had been allocated P4 million for Youth Development Fund during 2017/18 financial year.

He however said that it should be noted that the office still had a backlog of 33 proposals carried over from the previous financial year, saying they would be funded from the funds allocated for the current financial year.

Mr Nkwane pointed out that loan repayments still remained a huge problem as the office had only been able to collect a paltry three per cent of the targeted amount.

He pleaded with councillors to assist in encouraging the youth to repay their loans because some of them defaulted even when their businesses were doing well.

“The Poverty Eradication Programme has been credited with funds amounting to P6 940 000.00 for the financial year 2017/18,” he said.

He pointed out that a significant number of projects were operational since the inception of the programme in 2011, while training and monitoring was on-going.

The chairperson announced that government had decided to increase the purchase prices for small stock from P700 to P1 000 for females and P1 400 to P 2 000 for males under the Poverty Eradication programme which was a welcome development for the farming community.

He said Ministry of Agriculture Development and Food Security had started realigning itself to the new mandate of improving food security and championing agricultural development.

He explained that this was done to promote local production, reduce food import bill, diversify the sector for value addition ,amongst others. ENDS