28 Nov 2017

The much awaited Seronga/Gudigwa water supply project is still not complete.

The project was supposed to have been completed in April, which would have seen alleviation in the acute water outages in the Okavango District, particularly villages across the Okavango River.

Speaking at the Okavango Sub-district council meeting, the chairperson, Mr Mbahahauka Kambimba said as of October, the project stood at 97 per cent.

He explained that upon completion, the plant would supply villages from Ngarange to Mokgacha, Seronga and Beetsha up to Gudigwa.

On a similar issue, Mr Kambimba said the district had been facing unreliable power supply to parts of the water supply system, which resulted in disrupted water supply.

“To mitigate the situation, we are currently at tender evaluation stage for works involving the design, supply, installation, testing and commissioning of three diesel standby generators for Mohembo East, Gumare as well as Nxamasere booster station,” he said.

Further, Mr Kambimba said they had been working in the past three months finding options and solutions to improve the water supply situation in Qangwa, and that they had requested from the district commissioner’s office that they temporarily use Borehole No. 7381, which was allocated for horticultural community projects under poverty eradication.

He said the current mitigation of bowsing to Qangwa was inadequate as it did not meet the demand and was not reliable due to frequent breakdowns experienced by the water bowsing truck.

Still in the issue of water supply, the sub-district council chairperson said he had it on good authority that the Shakawe rehabilitation plant had finally been awarded at the cost of over P116 million.

“We are just awaiting confirmation of these good news by a letter from the ministerial tender committee,” said Mr Kambimba.

Meanwhile, on a different matter, the chairperson told fellow councillors that the Department of Wildlife and National Parks was allocated P4 million during the 2017/18 financial year for compensation to those that had suffered damages caused by wild animals.

He said out of the 1 448 cases amounting to P2.3 million pending payment, a total of 1 204 cases had been paid since April, amounting P2.1 million. BOPA