10 Oct 2019

Lobatse Mayor Ms Malebogo Kruger says an estimated P10 million would be required to revamp the vandalised street lights in the town.

Ms Kruger raised concern in her address to the full council meeting on October 9, noting that street lights suffered a lot of damage by members of the community in Lobatse.  

She explained that from the commencement of her tenure as mayor, she initiated an activity known as ‘operation mabone’ aimed at ensuring that the town’s lighting system was fully functional.

“The purpose of the activity was for the mayor, councillors, ward development committee members and council officials to undertake scheduled inspections in an effort to ultimately ensure that the Lobatse township lighting system was at all times fully functional,” she said.

She highlighted that findings from that exercise showed that a lot of street lights were vandalised and that funding estimated at around P10 million would now be required to revamp the vandalised street light infrastructure.

“I urge parents to talk to their children to stop vandalising the street lights because we are now forced to spend a lot of money on the same thing,” she pleaded.

Ms Kruger said for the 2019/20 financial year, council adopted a cost effective and environmentally friendly measure of installing 25 solar lights in Peleng Central. She said the project cost a total of P425 000.

“The project is complete and solar lights performance monitoring is ongoing as they are still under warranty,” she explained.

The mayor added that other street lighting projects were complete at Airstrip, Plantation, Boswelatlou, Motswedi and Tsopeng locations. She said the projects were done to the tune of P8. 465 million.

On road maintenance projects in the town, Ms Kruger said a total of 14.2 kilometres of internal roads would be maintained during the current financial year.

The mayor further said a total of 83.6 kilometres was resurfaced at the tune of P11.5 million from 2014 to date.

Regarding schools maintenance projects, Ms Kruger said P5.2 million was spent on maintenance works at eight primary schools in the town. She outlined that the projects were at different stages of progress.

She added that P3.2 million was spent on kitchen, administration and ablution blocks maintenance at Lobatse Senior Secondary School.

“There were also minor maintenance projects done in our junior secondary schools to keep the schools in shape,” she added. ENDS