30 May 2018

Construction of the stormwater drainage which forms part of the Gabane infrastructure development project through the Economic Stimulus Programme is said to be progressing well.

The infrastructure development project which is expected to give the village a major facelift and increase its economic status also include construction of bitumen standard road of 21.2 kilometres and street-lighting of 4.5 kilometres at a cost of P215 million.

Giving an update of the stormwater drainage project senior roads engineer at Kweneng District Council recently, Mr Kitso Ntire said the project was currently progressing well at 16 per cent against the expected 13 per cent.

He said the complete package of the stormwater drainage include 8 outfall drains and 17 mid-block drains and was started in August last year with excavations.

“These are critical drains. The roadside drain will take the water to the outfall drains which will eventually take the water to Segoditshane River,” he said.

In view of the important role played by the road network in the economic development of any area, the same could be said about the bitumen standard road of 21.2 kilometres planned for Gabane.

To this, Mr Ntirang said the roads will help in networking the rest of Gabane and to facilitate movement of traffic given the village’s population of over 15 000 according to the 2011 population census.

While one could come to the conclusion that not much was happening on the ground, Mr Ntirang explained that currently, they were still dealing with relocations which included both businesses, homes and services.

Services that had to be moved from the road corridor include that of BoFiNet, Botswana Telecommunications, water utilities and power corporation.

“About 252 people and businesses have been affected. We have 11 total relocations whereby the owners have been greatly affected by the works thereby moving them to news plots,” he said.

He said Asphalt Botswana, a fully owned citizen company has been contracted to do the work and had 118 employees, four being foreigners.

The Gabane infrastructure development project is expected to be completed by 2019. ENDS