20 Feb 2020

 The chairperson of Serowe Sub-council Mr Lesedi Phuthego says Serowe Sub-district is experiencing critical shortage of medical officers.

Speaking during a sub-council session on February 17, Mr Phuthego revealed that 11 medical officers left the district last year and in January this year.

“Four medical officers went for specialisation and others have resigned for various reasons”, he said adding that this had left the sub-district with only 11 medical officers of whom three were covering the eighteen clinics while eight are at the hospital.

He noted that the number was too low to effectively provide service hence patients had to wait for a long time to be assisted.

Mr Phuthego said this had also resulted in the cancellation of the Multi –Drug Resistant –TB Clinic (MDR- TB) because all the trained Doctors had left the district.

He said there is also a shortage of midwives and nurse prescribers for ARV in the clinics which affected the provision of service.

On another note, Mr Phuthego announced that during the  2019/2020 financial year, a total of 356 plots were allocated and most of the allocated plots were ploughing fields and some were residential registrations.

He however said that no new allocations for residential plots had been done as currently there were no layouts plans and the waiting list for the area stood at 31 662 applications.

He noted that National Land Registration Project (LAPCAS) was still ongoing and adjudication was at 63 per cent while plot signage displays stood at 28 per cent.

He further said that some of the challenges encountered in this project were that a lot of people  failed to claim their plots and members of the community did not understand the benefit of the programme.

Mr Phuthego urged councilors to disseminate information on the benefits of the project to the constituents.

The sub-land board is also to undertake robust house to house campaign and information dissemination to unclaimed plot owners, he said.

He said transfer of land rights was high in the area and a total of 388 plots transfer requests had been received.

He said Serowe Sub-land board was owed a total of P7 519 236 in lease rental arrears and the office managed to collect P286 746 of the set target of P2 263 024. ENDs