05 May 2020

The South East District Council (SEDC) has started distributing food packages to families as part of relief offered to those affected by extreme social distancing measure that were put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of over 4495 households out of 8535 households from Tlokweng and Ramotswa constituencies have received food rations from the district authority.

The numbers is made up of 2133 Tlokweng residents and 2362 Ramotswa constituency residents.

Chief Social Welfare and Community Development Officer, Ms Sylvia Gilika in an interview on May 05, explained that the figures were as from Sunday and that they are expecting to complete the exercise by Friday, May 08.

She highlighted that the district had engaged 18 independent transporters to help in the distribution exercise. She noted that the food distribution exercise in the district was faced with various challenges.

Ms Gilika said more often, trucks returned to the distribution center with some food parcels as they could not locate beneficiaries.

“Some of them when we get there, we realise that they have relocated. We do not understand how they managed to move around during lockdown,” Ms Gilika said.

Apart from tenants’ beneficiaries relocating after being assessed and approved for assistance, she said some food rations were returned because the beneficiaries were not home.

Ms Gilika said this created a challenge as they had to track the beneficiaries and start the process again.

Another problem faced by the council is that of residents who wanted their cases to be treated as emergency yet they were not identified to be so during assessment.

She further said her office was inundated with complaints of residents who wanted packages for bigger families just because they had seen others receiving them.

Ms Gilika highlighted that the packages e differed by the size of the family hence it was not possible to have the same package for the whole district. ends