19 Sep 2018

North West District commissioner, Mr Keolopile Leipego says the ongoing consultations on the new Poverty Eradication Strategy are key to ensuring complete success of the programme.

Speaking at the National Poverty Eradication Strategy consultations with implementers in Maun on September 18, Mr Leipego said the consultations were critical for an informed framework through sharing experiences, challenges and successes of the poverty eradication program.

Mr Leipego also said it was important to bring stakeholders and beneficiaries on board with the new programme.

He observed that all stakeholders who include the education, health and the tourism sectors as well as churches were critical, especially in the North West district.

He said tourism as the second contributor to the economy and having its stronghold in the north west was a critical stakeholder.

He said the existing poverty eradication programme had its shortcomings with only about 20 per cent success of beneficiaries who experienced a complete turnaround in their lives through the projects.

Mr Leipego said the expectation was to experience a 100 per cent outcome from the poverty projects, adding that the consultations would help to identify challenges and solutions especially for implementers that would be incorporated with the new strategy.

Mr Leipego nonetheless said the projects that totally failed together with such beneficiaries should not be forgotten when moving forward, but rather find ways of assisting them.

He said some projects failed due to lack of skills on the part of the beneficiaries, therefore it was important to improve on projects follow-ups in future.

Assistant poverty eradication coordinator, Mr Ndiye Moloyi said the new strategy aimed for inclusion of all people living in poverty.

Mr Moloyi observed that the strategy was aligned to other national development policies such as Vision 2036, which advocated for prosperity for all and globally to the Sustainable Development Goals which called for ‘leave no one behind’.

He noted that although government had different policies and programmes aimed at eradicating poverty, there was challenge of parallel policies, failure to include all affected and lack of monitoring and evaluation.

Mr Moloyi therefore said the new strategy would allow profiling of the underprivileged by age, village and district to ensure total inclusion.

He said with some programmes in the past, some well-off people benefited while some who were extremely poor were left behind.

Mr Moloyi also noted the importance of engaging with the beneficiaries during the ongoing consultations, adding that the beneficiaries were best placed to inform government on what can be used to improve their lives and can share experiences.

He also said the new strategy would help identify beneficiaries keen on entrepreneurship from those who preferred to be employees, which could improve the success rate of the programme.

He said another improvement would be to enhance community leadership in monitoring and strengthening guidelines.

Commenting during the consultation meeting, Mr Keneth Karanja of Career Dreams Academy advised that government should encourage the formation of cooperatives as that could help the projects to withstand challenges. Ends