03 Sep 2018

Government is in the process of engaging the private sector on the importance of procuring from poverty eradication beneficiaries.

Addressing the Francistown council meeting last Friday, Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Machana Shamukuni said his ministry would be starting breakfast meetings with the private sector to woo them to lean towards poverty eradication beneficiaries when procuring goods.

“The private sector is an important stakeholder in the development of the lives of people and its involvement in poverty eradication initiatives can help fight abject poverty amongst Batswana and create employment,” he said.

He said government believes that the role of the private sector in coming up with interventions was critical in the eradication of poverty amongst Batswana.

Mr Shamukuni also implored government and council procuring institutions to support poverty eradication beneficiaries by procuring their goods.

He said government continued to register poverty eradication beneficiaries whilst at the same time clearing the backlog.

The assistant minister also informed councillors that funding for poverty eradication programmes was moved from the council to the district commissioner’s office for purposes of coordination and efficiency.

He explained that since its inception in 2011, the programme had made significant improvements on the lives of Batswana.

He noted that a study carried by Statistics Botswana showed that since 2011 poverty in Botswana had reduced from 36.6 per cent to 16 per cent in 2016.

He said in Francistown poverty has been reduced from 23.4 per cent to 5.8 per cent over the same period, adding that the Francistown District was allocated P5.3 million since the inception of the programme to date.

He said the programme registered 991 projects and out of the figure, 754 projects were operational whilst 60 have failed due to various reasons and that 102 of them were doing exceptionally well.

However, the assistant minister noted that there were still many challenges facing the programme, citing market creation and group dynamics.

Mr Shamukuni also said Batswana were unable to work together, and that it created a serious setback in their businesses.

He said another challenge was poor coordination of some of the projects, but said this would be addressed by the formation of a national strategy in two months on poverty intervention initiatives.

For their part, councillors insisted that funding of poverty eradication programmes should be moved to the Francistown City Council, saying since its relocation to the district commissioner’s office, there had been little progress in terms of pushing the backlog as well as registering new beneficiaries.

Councillor Joe Gunda of Somerset East suggested that beneficiaries should be trained on their businesses so that they know what was expected of them.

Councillor Jenamiso Mujaki of Ipopeng ward suggested that training of poverty eradication beneficiaries must be increased from the current three months to six months to equip them with enough knowledge.

Other councillors called for an effective monitoring of poverty eradication projects, saying some beneficiaries dumped their projects in favour of the Ipelegeng programme.ENDS