13 Dec 2017

Central District district commissioner, Ms Berenice Berman-Mosime says it is not possible to take legal action or repossess properties from youth who fail to service their loans.

She said the policy did not stipulate the procedure to be followed on the youth who did not service their loan in terms of the legal action which could be taken against them.

Ms Berman-Mosime was responding to a question by Letlhakane West councillor, Ms Thatayaone Modirwagale who had expressed concern on the rising number of youth who failed to re-pay their loans.

Ms Modirwagale said it was sad that most youth who benefitted from the programme had resorted not to pay back their loans, and she wanted to know if there were any means which could be used to get them to pay such as engaging debt collectors.

Ms Berman-Mosime said consultations were ongoing to come up with measures that could be used to collect the funds.

Presenting the second quarter of the Central District Development Committee report, Ms Berman-Mosime said there were arrears amounting to close to P43 million while close to P4 million had been collected since the inception of the programme.

“The Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development has funded a total of 2 759 projects, 2 390 are operational, 279 have collapsed while 238 are at the procurement stage,” she said.

She said project monitoring was carried out on 227 projects. She added that about 4 300 jobs had been created with a turnover of about P2 million.

“The challenges encountered include failure to service loans, relocation of beneficiaries without informing the office, lack of commitment and beneficiaries in major villages are faced with a challenge of high rentals,” she said.

She said to address the challenges the department had resorted to providing training for beneficiaries, and that they continued to contact the parents and relatives of the youth to help in locating those who had relocated.

She added that the department would write reprimand letters to defaulters.

She said the Poverty Eradication Programme was undergoing a backlog eradication process, and that the district was allocated close to P30 million to address the challenge.

“Four sub-districts namely Bobirwa, Boteti, Serowe and Tonota were allocated additional funding hence the increase in the total amount funded, leaving the balance of P6 678 651 73,” she said.

She said the programme faced a number of challenges such as beneficiaries taking similar projects in the same area hence competing for the same customers, failure to manage funds by beneficiaries, and that some seemed not to have fully implemented what they were trained for.

“Some beneficiaries prefer working individually. When they are in groups they fight and abandon projects. They tend to lose interest once they come across challenges while some abandon projects for quick cash such as Ipelegeng and security companies,” she said.

When presenting under health programmes, Ms Berman-Mosime noted that there was an increase in teenage pregnancy cases, saying they registered 58 more cases compared to the previous quarter.

“There are 424 teenage pregnancies registered compared to 366 registered in the previous quarter. Fifteen out of 424 were teenagers under the age of 15 compared to 21 in the previous quarter,” she said.

She said the department would continue to intensify health education and further promote abstinence as a preventative strategy.

She noted that it was an offence to impregnate underage girls, and said where perpetrators were identified legal action was taken against them.

However, she said it was difficult to do so for victims who could not identify such perpetrators. 

Councillor Modirwagale had also wanted to know if action was taken against perpetrators who impregnated teenage girls. ENDS