27 Nov 2019

 Member of Parliament for Palapye, Mr Onneetse Ramogapi, says the village’s population warrants it the status of a township.

Debating State-Of-Nation Address on Tuesday, Mr Ramogapi said the Local Government and Rural Development Act stipulated that a place within any administrative district or township with mineral developments could be declared a township.

He, therefore, said since Palapye was home to Morupule Colliery, it qualified for the status.

Mr Ramogapi said Palapye deserved a primary hospital owing to the high number of road accidents that occurred along the A1 road. He said this was also in view of the services provided by Palapye to villages in the periphery such as those in Tswapong.

He said Palapye internal roads were in a bad state while there was also lack of accommodation for teachers at Palapye schools and other public service officers.

Mr Ramogapi argued that the shortage of learning materials at schools affected the learning process noting that efficient service delivery in the workplace was downgraded by lack of progression on the part of civil servants.

On other issues, he complained about the lack of sound policies which protected small business enterprises.

He said small businesses which should be reserved exclusively for Batswana were dominated by foreigners because of lack of favourable policies to protect the citizenry.

He cited businesses such as catering and bricklaying which he said should be for the locals.

Mr Ramogapi appealed to government to consider increasing the budget for the ministry of youth, to afford young people an opportunity to venture into businesses and be self-employed, adding that the Youth Development Fund was a good initiative.

He was also of the view that there was malpractice in the government tendering processes and that the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) initial costs for loan processing were not favourable for most Batswana as they were expected to present huge sums of money as security for such loans.

On corruption, he said the government was slow to bring perpetrators to book citing the Morupule B and Fengyue Glass Manufacturing Project in Palapye as some of the failed projects which government spent large sums of money on. ENDS