04 Mar 2019

Government is committed to ensuring that all is done to achieve rural development and to transform livelihoods.

The Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Admnistration, Mr Machana Shamukuni, said this during official opening of poverty eradication mass packaging event and market day in Rakops recently.

The objective, he said, was to ensure that all Batswana lived a dignified life through eradication of abject poverty and reduction of vulnerability in those with relative poverty.

He said government continued to establish ways to improve how Batswana could be reached, assessed and to help those who qualified to choose packages.

Mr Shamukuni said government was concurrently implementing poverty eradication with development of a national poverty eradication strategy and policy to further provide guidance on how to enhance service provision.

He explained that the aim was to ensure alignment with national long term strategy of Vision 2036 and sustainable development goals, specifically the national strategy and policy.

That, he said, addressed disparities between and within communities across the country, noting amongst other others skewedness of poverty within rural areas, women as opposed to men as well as the recent emergence of child poverty.

He said the theme “transforming livelihoods” was appropriately set, adding that government had been dealing with serious backlogs with programmes cross cutting across ministries.

Mr Shamukuni stated that government was firm on the belief that the projects implemented in rural areas could contribute to employment creation, noting that projects as toilet paper production, tent hire and fishing among others were the major contributors to employment creation.

He stated that Boteti had 922 operational projects creating 1014 employment opportunities and that the 13 villages in Boteti accounted for 608 projects funded investing around P9 million, most of which was invested in the area.

Mr Shamukuni said there was a still a backlog of 360 and the mass packaging reduced the number to 264.

He said efforts were also underway to secure ranches for rearing goats and sheep using Lobu model. The district leadership he said with national coordination office was looking into bottling water noting the high demand in the area.

He said some of the beneficiaries in Boteti graduated and an additional 45 from the area were ready to graduate from the programme because they were living a successful life.

Poverty Eradication national coordinator, Mr Montshiwa Montshiwa,  indicated that since the inception of Poverty Eradication Programme in 2011, about 33 600 businesses had been funded out of which 26 225 were operational.

Mr Montshiwa stated that the projects provided employment to about 28 635 people, with Batswana directly working in businesses.

Furthermore 255 Batswana of which 241 were young people had been employed as part of implementation team in the programme.

He stated that 1357 businesses representing four per cent failed due to various reasons amongst them lack of market, access to market, high operational costs as a result of non-availability of raw materials.

Boteti, he said, was one area that was generally progressing well, coming second after Bobonong in terms of poverty incidence reduction. Poverty level, he said, reduced from 29.8 per cent to 12.9 per cent. ENDS