23 Oct 2017

Maun Village Development Committee (VDC) umbrella chairperson, Mr Moronga Dimbo has commended the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) for addressing accommodation challenges in the North West District.

Mr Dimbo, who was speaking at a kgotla meeting addressed by the Minister for Infrastructure and Housing Development, Mr Nonofo Molefhi, noted that ESP projects responsible for expansion of Tshwaragano Junior Secondary School in Maun had helped the school to accommodate many students who used to travel distances to other schools.

The ESP projects, he said, had also augmented the number of classrooms and staff houses in the region.

However, he expressed concern about the delay in completion of ESP projects as well as low intake of Self Help Housing Agency (SHHA) in the district. Again, he said low implementation of the SHHA programme discouraged potential applicants.

In response, Minister Molefhi said ESP projects were not hurried as expected in the North West region due to various factors.

Mr Molefhi indicated that some construction companies that had shown interest on projects overcharged government, but spent less on such projects.

As such, he said dialogue regarding overcharging between the two parties would last for over 6 months which in turn stalled progress in starting projects.

Mr Molefhi also said there was an agreement to divide the 78 ESP projects among various companies in the North West region to empower locals.

However, he said the process to engage about 3 000 companies over the 78 projects became tedious and caused further delay to starting the projects.

On SHHA, Mr Molefhi said only 17 houses were allocated to applicants per constituency in a year, which led to a backlog.

He said there were about 5 000 approved applications to date that were worth about P600 million, out of which only P200 million had been collected from beneficiaries while about P5.6 million was owed to SHHA in the North West region.

As a result, he said SHHA would only approve the number of the allocated 17 per constituency per year to avoid backlog owing to financial constraints to address the current backlog. ENDS