17 Dec 2019

Newly elected Kgalagadi District Council chairperson, Mr Hendrick Jacobs has expressed concern over reluctance of officers to work in Kgalagadi district, saying it hampers service delivery.

Delivering his maiden speech  durng the first Kgalagadi District Council Full Council meeting since 2019 general elections, Mr Jacobs said the human resource capital was a critical aspect to service delivery, noting that if officers declined transfers to work in Kgalagadi it could be a drawback to mandate delivery.

“I have been informed that most officers who are posted or transferred to the district show reluctance to come and work in Kgalagadi. This has resulted in shortage of staff in the district as some posts take long to be filled,” he said.

He noted that the situation was worsened by poor infrastructural development such as shortage of institutional accommodation.

This, he said, hampered service delivery and adversely affected project implementation as some job positions took a longer time to be filled.

Nonetheless, he said, government continued to deal with the situation by building houses in the district through the Economic Stimulus programme (ESP) and the constituency community projects.

He stated that Kgalagadi district occupied a large land area with vast distance between Kgalagadi North and South.

This, he said adversely affected decision making.

He highlighted that time was lost on travelling and there were travelling costs which impacted on limited resources available thus compromising service delivery.

To address the matter, the chairperson said, government would be lobbied to make Hukuntsi  Sub-district Council and Tsabong Sub-dstrict Council autonomous.

Further, he said, scarcity of both portable water for human consumption and for livestock continued to pose a serious challenge in the district.

“Lack of adequate water supply has negatively affected developments of the district which is a livestock hub. When found it is too saline for livestock,” he stated.

Areas such as Draaihoek and Makopong in Kgalagadi south and all settlements in Hukuntsi Sub-district are facing water shortages.

On education, he said education results in the region continued to be below standard. “Our District has over the years experienced the challenge of low performance in schools as shown by the low pass rates across the primary, junior and secondary schools. For us to develop as a district we need to strive to change this,” he said.

He told councilors that it was incumbent upon them to take responsibility and come up with initiatives to turn the situation around.

Some of the contributing factors, he said, were that the education sector was faced with the challenge of staff turnover which had resulted in employment of temporary teachers to deal with the situation.

On poverty eradication, the chairperson noted that beneficiaries still lacked basic business skills despite being taken through training especially on product and service licensing.

This, he noted limited their opportunities to participate in tendering processes. Furthermore, some of the beneficiaries ended up abandoning their projects to engage in other economic activities such as Ipelegeng instead of focusing on growing their business.

This, he said, would influence direction of the council to address access to market and capacitate beneficiaries to compete in the business environment.

As their term in office commenced, he called on all councilors to put aside their political party affiliations and work collectively to deliver on promises made to the people. ENDS