27 Aug 2017

Mindset change and use of cooperatives are the weapons that will help beneficiaries to benefit from government programmes.

Addressing stakeholders’ consultative meeting, chairperson of Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Local Governance and Social Welfare, Mr Buti Billy encouraged the social responsibility representatives to preach mindset change to the beneficiaries so that the programmes they access benefitted them.

He also advised that cooperatives were also another option that could create good business deals in the Poverty Eradication Programme.

He said they were conducting consultative meetings to learn about the success stories of government programmes and the challenges they experienced.

Mr Billy further said they were consulting to find out whether people were committed to programmes they were given.

He explained that it was imperative for the committee to have a concrete relationship with the community leaders and other stakeholders so that they help each other on how to achieve the objectives of the programmes and also come up with strategies of what could be done.

When addressing the delegates, deputy district commissioner, Ms Kolobetso Sejakgomo said as the district, they encouraged monitoring of projects and noted that even in previous weeks projects have been monitored.

She said the programmes were responding well and also advocated for the formation of cooperatives, which she said would bear fruit.

Lobatse town councillors complained about the challenges of rental spaces for the beneficiaries.

They said in Lobatse rental was expensive and in most cases, beneficiaries were making a loss out of their businesses.

They also said the market was saturated as most of them were already competing with existing businesses.

Councillors also applauded the committee for the consultative meeting, saying such meetings were important.

They said if such meetings could be held frequently, poverty eradication projects would become a success because all stakeholders would be included to share ideas. Ends