29 Aug 2018

Francistown City Council (FCC) has resolved to allocate more land to the Special Economic Zone Authority (SEZ).

The decision followed a plea from the SEZ director of policy and industrial selection, Mr Lonely Mugara. The council resolved to give the authority an additional 639 hectares from the initial 600 hectares.

The resolution, which was spearheaded by specially elected councillor, Mr James Kgalajwe after Mr Mugara’s presentation was backed by a majority of councillors.

In his presentation on Tuesday, Mr Mugara stated that they initially requested 1 000 hectares of land for Special Economic Zones, but were only given 600 hectares. He said it was not enough for the master-plan they had for Francistown.

He said his organisation accepted the little they had and decided to treat the land allocated as phase one of the plan.“The need to create the Francistown master-plan was even greater now with the construction of the Kazungula Bridge because the inflow of traffic from long haulage trucks into the city would be greater once the bridge is complete,” he noted.

He said because of scenarios like that, the need for more land was urgent as they needed better roads, improvements of airports and sewerage systems.

“We have also taken a decision to build a state of the art dry port in the city to help ease regional trade,” Mr Mugara said.

The Special Economic Zone Authority, he said, had already secured some funds and was ready to implement primary infrastructures such as roads and sewerage systems in some of the zoned land. He called for councillors’ support in getting some of the projects earmarked under SEZ off the ground because Botswana was not the only country with such zones to attract investors.

He said other developed countries had the same zones, and that with their governments’ backing, they were attracting lucrative private investments. Commenting on the presentation, Cllr Kgalajwe said the issue of land was causing many rifts and decried the large number of regulations that he said frustrated their efforts to bring developments to their people.

He called for a council resolution to allocate at least 1 000 hectares of land to SEZ and further called for more deregulation to ease direct investment into the city.

“Investors will not spend their money here under all this regulations,” Cllr Kgalajwe said.

Backing Cllr Kgalajwe, another specially elected councillor, Mr Peter Ngoma called for an even larger number of hectares of land for SEZ, suggesting they be allocated 1 300 hectares instead.

In the end, councillors resolved to allocate 1 239 hectares with the city mayor, Ms Sylvia Muzila reminding them that there were still to take the matter up with the relevant land authority when they present to council next week.

She applauded councillors for the resolution, saying she has always believed that the land matter in Francistown delayed developments.  ENDS