12 Jul 2018

Assistant Minister of Land Management, Water and Sanitation Services, Mr Itumeleng Moipisi says land servicing at Sowa Town was done by the then Ministry of Local Government until Presidential Directive CAB 39/2002 that directed that part of the functions of the technical unit in the Ministry of Local Government that deals with pre-allocation of land servicing in urban centres be transferred to the Ministry of Lands and Housing.

Responding to a question in Parliament, Mr Moipisi said the mandate commenced in 2007 when ongoing land servicing projects were transferred for monitoring purposes. 

Mr Moipisi said servicing of Sowa SHHA Block 3 was one of the projects which were awarded and implemented by Sowa Town Council whilst both ministries secured funding as the project entailed upgrading of storm water drainage and servicing of 202 plots explaining that implementation of the project failed on two occasions and the ministry was in the process of procuring the third contractor. He said the need to deploy teams to assess the situation would not be necessary because the assessment had already been done.

“The ministry engaged TTCS Consulting in 2015 to conduct an audit in respect of land servicing issue in Sowa Town in order to assess the situation and they came up with a set of remedial actions that led to the procurement of Sky Lark Engineers to complete the work,” he said. Unfortunately, Mr Moipisi said this failed as a result of poor performance of the contractor.

He noted that there was failure of contractor to complete works, as a result, there was a re-tender which was currently being challenged by two bidders and one of the contractors had now escalated his query to PPADB.

Mr Moipisi said his ministry could only determine a specific date for servicing of Sowa Town upon resolution of this matter and noted that the need for a supplementary budget would not arise since the provision that had been availed to cater for land servicing in Sowa Block 3 was not yet exhausted.

MP for Nata-Gweta Mr Polson Majaga had asked the minister if he was aware that since Sowa was declared a township, there was no land servicing done to date and if so whether or not he would consider deploying teams to assess the situation and rectify the problem.

MP Majaga also wanted to know when the problem of land servicing would be done in Sowa Town for the allocation of residential/business plots and if  there would be a supplementary budget to address the situation. BOPA