03 Jun 2020

The Department of Social and Community Development in Serowe Administrative Authority (SAA) has reported that out of 16 632 beneficiaries recommended for COVID-19 food packages, 15 771 have received their food baskets to date.

Reporting during Serowe Sub-district Council special meeting held in Serowe recently, the acting principal social welfare oficer, Ms Amuchilani Sandawana said the Central District Council invited 100 per cent citizen owned business to express their interest to supply food commodities for COVID-19 food relief packages.

Ms Sandawana informed councilors that emergency operation teams carried out the task of evaluating and awarding residents in villages outside Serowe.

She said the initiative was intended to support, empower local communities and facilitate easy access and had helped in empowering locals.

Ms Sandawana said to date, the department had engaged 205 private vehicles to augment government fleet and transport food.

She said they were faced with challenges such as vehicle owners who were complaining of low remunerations and those who had registered outside their localities, resulting in queries by locals.

Another challenge she said was shortage of items such as bread flour, maize meal, rice, sugar and canned beef resulting in an increased number of queries.

Further, Ms Sandawana said that increased prices of food commodities at the wholesalers resulted in suppliers increasing prices as well.

All donations for the administrative authority she said were directed to the deputy district commissioners’ office and were used to augment food baskets.

Councilors were informed that the SAA was allocated P 5. 1m for food relief and that expenditure stood at P4m for payment of 170 food basket suppliers.

This translates to 78.5 per cent of funds utilisation.

Ms Sandawana said funds amounting to P820 207 were allocated for purposes of procurement of agricultural products.

The sum of P629 445 has been expended this far on payment of 171 suppliers, translating to 77 per cent total expenditure.

She explained that P1.3m was allocated for payment of temporary employees with P238 073.50 expended on their salaries for the month of April. ENDS