02 Mar 2020

Out of the total budget of P30.9 million allocated to Letlhakeng Sub-district for the financial year 2019/20, 85 per cent of the budget or over P26, 3 million has been used to fund Ipelegeng programmes. 

When making a presentation during the Letlhakeng sub-district council session recently, Ipelegeng Coordinator Ms Masego Sabata said the budget was for the implementation of 174 projects which included 28 dam desilting, 89 debushing projects, nine maintenance of public facilities, 30 litter picking, six fencing, seven construction projects and five for maintenance of drift fence.

She said out of 174 projects, 151 were nearing completion while only three projects had been completed with a few projects lagging behind.

Ms Sabata told councillors that 43 projects for the drought relief technical projects were also at different stages of completion with 12 projects at 100 per cent.

She further said the Ipelegeng programme quota was increased by 348 beneficiaries from 2931 to 3279 in September 2018 after the 2017/18 was declared an arable agricultural drought year.

“The ministry has disbursed 100 per cent of the drought relief mitigation amounting to P5.5 million for the implementation of drought relief projects. The current expenditure is at P4.7 million with the remaining balance standing at P762, 084.40.”

Ms Sabata said the total monthly employment target for the year stood at 3279, while the total cumulative employment for the district was 32 790.

She also said there were 14 wards in Letlhakeng/Lephepe and Takatokwane constituencies engaging 95 beneficiaries for the month of January 2020 as green scorpion and their duties included enforcing the waste management act by monitoring of waste management such as littering, oil spillages, illegal dumping of waste. 

The coordinator said sustenance funds for the 2019/2020 financial year for all the 14 wards were budgeted at P6.2 million and the expenditure to date stood at P5.2 million.

Ms Sabata said they had facilitated the recruitment of Ipelegeng volunteers for the preparations of the morning breakfast in all the 25 primary schools. She added that the volunteers would be guided by the Ipelegeng guidelines, rules, regulations and rates and their contract would run for 12 months with 63 volunteers engaged for the feeding programme.

She said despite the challenges they faced like frequent breakdown of vehicles and delay in maintenance as well as delivery of building materials by suppliers, they would continue to do their best to improve service delivery and ensure timely completion of projects.

Ms Sabata added that they had requested for funds amounting to P29.4 million for the implementation of Ipelegeng programme for the financial year 2020/21.

Councillors were happy that Ipelegeng programme had created employment for Batswana but expressed worry that some projects took long to be completed. 

Councilor Johane Gaosafelwe of Takatokwane ward said it was important that beneficiaries were residents of the same ward so that local empowerment could be carried out smoothly as per government initiative. Ends