06 Mar 2018

Central District Council chairperson, Mr Peter Williams says his council has set out to improve fire protection coverage throughout its seven sub-districts.

Mr Williams said this at the opening of the last quarter of the ordinary full council in the fiscal year 2017/18, which has been scheduled from March 5-23 this year.

“The department has a staff compliment of 139 fire personnel, two fire engines and two ambulances in Palapye and Serowe. Mahalapye and Tutume are equipped with two smaller Japanese fire engines,” he said.

He noted that all stations were facilitated by utility vehicles, adding that, the council, in conjunction with the sub-district intended to establish a sub-station in Bobirwa and Boteti.

“The council in cooperation with the sub-districts will seek and strategically install a number of fire hydrants in high risk, high hazard areas in the above mentioned sub-districts,” he said.

With regard to the commercial building plan reviews for fire protection requirement, he noted that the Fire Department has received 27 commercial plans, adding that, of the total, 24 met the minimum requirements and were approved, while three were referred for additional fire safety measures.

Mr William indicated that the Central District will be focusing on capacity building, adding that the Fire Department will be facilitating several training courses in 2018/2019 to include hazardous material operation, advance firefighting and investigation and driver/pump operator courses, which will be facilitated in-house.

“Taking into cognisance that the Central District is the largest District in Botswana, the Fire Department will embark on its annual weekends fire awareness campaign in the seven sub districts, the view of which will be to fully educate the Central District community, with the theme being, ‘A safe and secure Central District,” he said.

He said, at this event, there will be a number of attractive features to attract the respective public in each sub-district.

“Central District will spare no effort to ensure, an additional two sub stations are installed in Boteti and Bobirwa with support from other sub-districts."

Presenting on education, Mr Williams indicated that the 2017 examinations were held under a pleasant atmosphere, as there were no disturbing incidences reported.

He said the results indicated a slight improvement in all three levels.

“In the 2017 primary school leaving examinations for central region, all 238 public schools sat for the examinations.

The district registered 13 267 candidates from public schools. The outcome of the results shows that the district pass rate of public schools stood at 33.4 per cent (AB) and 70.9 per cent (Grades ABC), this is an improvement of 1.8 per cent in the ABC grades,” he said.

He noted that a further analysis indicated that PSLE results have been gradually increasing over the years from 2012 at 65.2 per cent to 2016 at 70.9 per cent, which showed an improvement of 5.7 per cent over the past five years, which was very commendable.

“Another observation with regard to the results is that 60 out of 238 schools scored above the regional target of 80 per cent as compared to 70 last year. 94 out of 238 schools scored above the national target of 76 per cent as compared to 100 last year, while 17 out of 238 schools scored below 50 per cent as compared to 20 last year,” he said.

With regard to junior certificate examinations, he said all the 74 junior secondary schools sat for the JCE in the district, adding that the district registered 13 104 candidates, of which out of these, 4 311 obtained A,B, C grades.

“The overall district percentage pass is 35.5 per cent (merit, ABC) which is an improvement by 1.6 per cent. ENDS