27 Jun 2018

Serowe Administrative Authority principal economist, Ms Lingani Alujalo- Stephen says the council has decided to reduce scope of waste management due to shortage of funds and transport. 

Ms Alujalo-Stephen said this at the first session of the Serowe District leadership forum recently. 

She said it was agreed that all parastatal organisations, government institutions and institutional houses be removed from the scope of outsourced work. 

“In the 2017/18 financial year, waste collection outsourcing was budgeted at P1.4 million, while the expenditure was P1.9 million. 

In the 2018/19 financial year, budget is at P900 000 hence failure to continue providing this services,” she said. 

She indicated that all 24 council institutions and 268 households will therefore be serviced by council trucks together with 1 369 private households. 

Ms Alujalo-Stephen further noted that they had put five Skip Hire containers at the Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) households, adding that the  containers were put in all open spaces and play grounds for tenants to dispose of waste and would be collected once a week while the compactor truck would visit the area once a month. 

“Eight sanitation attendants have been engaged at the mall and one compactor truck engaged to collect waste. The same truck also collects waste in private households. 

Tipper trucks are also engaged to collect waste in households in place of side loader truck, which is still under repair,” she said. 

Thus, she said all central government institutions have been notified to arrange for their waste collection and disposal from April. 

“Other central government offices have already engaged private companies to assist with waste collection, while some requested to be assisted pending tenders and quotations,” she said. 

Further, she indicated that there were some challenges that included high cost of construction projects in the Remote Area Communities as a result of collecting sand and concrete from licensed suppliers outside the district. 

“Sand is sourced from Mahalapye, while concrete stones are from Palapye and Mahalapye. 

As a result, construction of these houses is delayed due to shortage of trucks to ferry materials required to complete them,” she said. 

Under the Social and Community Development, Ms Alujalo-Stephen indicated that most of the Village Development Committees (VDCs) were due for elections. 

“SAA has 29 VDCs and one umbrella, 15 are due for elections and most are ongoing. 

To date, nine VDCs have been elected. 

So far, elections have gone well except for one VDC and the query is being attended to,” she said. 

Ms Alujalo-Stephen bemoaned increasing numbers of destitute persons, saying they registered 734 people during the 2017/18 financial year and 1 831 this financial year. 

“This is despite government interventions to have destitute people exit the social safety programme,” she said. 

Other challenges, she said included shortage of office space for SAA employees, heavy plant in the sub-district as well as monitoring of vehicles. 

“There has been an increase of project funding and monitoring of such projects has proved difficult with the existing projects. 

We therefore recommend a request of P900 000 to be set aside as a pledge between the three constituencies,” she said. ENDS