16 Jun 2019

South East District Council has passed a motion calling for the review of the Youth Development Fund (YDF), which the council agreed it was unsustainable.

Presenting the motion before the council recently, Tlokweng specially elected councillor, Ms  Kedibonye Batlang said there was need to review the funding policy structure of YDF, where individual projects were funded at P100 000 per project and P500 000 per grouping.

She said the current structure had proved to be unstainable in addressing youth unemployment, but rather problematic for youth businesses.

Ms Batlang said the district development committee reports chronicled challenges faced by youth businesses year after year, yet money was still channelled in the same manner.

“The thrust of the motion is to facilitate industry development in our country, by ensuring prudence in utilisation of our national budget, in particular YDF,” she said.

Among the problems facing the YDF is under capitalisation of projects, hence many could not meet their overheads.

The councillor also blamed sense of entitlement from young people as one of the reasons hindering project progress, saying youth lacked commitment as they believed the government was responsible for caring for them.

Ms Batlang said the ministry should consider funding industries and have a group of young people running the project in partnership with an advisory board set up by the government to oversee projects per district.

She said the current funding of P2 million per constituency was enough to start a sustainable project, which could benefit the young people.

Councillor Dichabe Seitshiro of Tlokweng Central said a lot had been spent on young people under the programme, but not much had been attained.

He said the P2 million per constituency would be P4 million for the South East District, as the district consists of two constituencies, Ramotswa and Tlokwneg, hence such money was sufficient for a sustainable youth-led project.

Councillor Seitshiro said such model would be ideal to even help the country reduce its import bill as some products could be processed locally.

All that would be needed, he said, would be willing youth who would be trained and made to be ready to run business. 

After the debate, the council adopted the motion without any objections, something that councillor Batlang appreciated, saying the motion was progressive. ENDs