29 Nov 2018

 Southern District Councillors have been informed that ISPAAD programme continues to be implemented despite the issue of late rains.

Addressing Southern District full council meeting on November 27, council chairperson Mr Alec Seametso stated that even though ploughing had not commenced as expected, preparations for this ploughing season had started.

Seametso noted that the district had so far received seeds as follows; sorghum 34 tonnes of open pollinated varieties and 317 tonnes hybrid, maize eight tonnes and cowpeas 83 tonnes, which were received from private companies.

He added that for this ploughing season 11 994 farmers registered for seed collection as compared to 12 363 who benefited from government seeds in the 2016/17 ploughing season.

“Let us join hands and pray for rain as arable agriculture is the cornerstone of food security at household level, which will address issues of hunger and malnutrition which are visible in our district,’’ he said.

Concerning constituency community programme, the chairperson said the initiative of projects is also a useful tool in empowering the communities and addressing issues of development gaps in the localities.

He said they experienced some hiccups at the beginning of the programme in 2017/18, which led to the programme spilling over to the 2018/19 financial year.

“Notwithstanding, most of the projects from the previous year are now complete except for the few which were faced with the problem of unavailability of land, delayed production of plans and drawings due to shortage of staff and water in some instances,’’ he stated.

He said these projects had collectively resulted in a remarkable impact such as reducing maintenance backlog, addressing housing and office space shortages and, to a limited extent, village infrastructure needs. ENDS