01 Mar 2020

Jwaneng township mayor, Ms Olga Ditsie says  her council was concerned with squatting in the periphery of the town as new squatters continue to emerge.

Speaking during the Jwaneng Town Council full session recently, she said that of grave concern was the fact that such squatters lived in inhabitable structures, where there were no proper sanitation and sewer disposal systems.

Ms Ditsie said that in this way, the squatters contributed to the degradation and pollution of the environment among other vices.

She however, assured the councillors that preparations were underway to evict such squatters, and called for the councillors’ cooperation and support as the exercise could be difficult.

On other issues, Ms Ditsie also raised a concern on the increase of illegal multi-family arrangements that she said were mostly caused by high rentals and shortage of land for residential development.

She therefore appealed to councillors to encourage the community to apply for change of land use to multi-family developments as the law required.

She also raised a concern on a high number of undeveloped serviced plots for residential, commercial and industrial purposes in the township.

She said that failure to develop delayed the development of the town and painted an undesired picture as it portrayed wrong perspective that there was dire shortage of land.

She cautioned that if the trend continued, the council would be compelled to repossess plots and reallocate them to those willing to develop.

Meanwhile, Ms Ditsie said that dysfunctional families due to alcohol abuse by parents in settlements surrounding Jwaneng led to child negligence, with such neglected children ending up coming to Jwaneng and becoming street children.

She indicated that such children initially come to Jwaneng to look for something to eat, but then stay in the streets as they could not commute daily to and fro their settlements.

Ms Ditsie said to address the situation, the district had currently embarked on an assessment to profile these children, an exercise that she said was expected to be concluded at the end of February.

“Upon completion we will then engage the Southern District Council on how best to assist them, possibly to repatriate them to their families,” she said.

Commenting on the mayor’s speech, councillor for Molopo Ward, Mr Oduetse Rabanna reiterated that the existence of street children in the township was a concern and an eyesore, more so that some of them engaged in unbecoming behaviours such as waiting by shop entrances to snatch customers’ items.

Mr Rabanna said that there was even a recent incident where one of the street children was assaulted by a customer after trying a ‘grab and run’, and said that the council had to act as such children were in danger.

Councillor for Kgalagadi Ward, Mr Tshokodiso Lesetedi said that squatting would never be eradicated as long as the land board took long to allocate people residential plots.

He therefore advised the council to hasten allocation.

“The authorities need to set itself a time frame as to how long they will take to allocate a person after applying.

As the only town around, Jwaneng is naturally attractive to people from the nearby settlements who have no place of residence here, so we need a permanent solution,” he said. ENDS