13 Aug 2020

North West District Council (NWDC) is grappling with challenges on programmes and project implementation.

When updating councillors on the status of ongoing projects and programmes, finance and education committee chairperson, Mr Petros Tjetjoo, said issues of land ownership, poor performance by contractors and inadequate resources had played a great part in late delivery of projects.

A period of extreme social distancing, he said, also had a negative impact on implementation schedules, adding that resources had to be diverted to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Tjetjoo cited Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP3), primary school backlog eradication, constituency community projects, destitute, RADP housing, maintenance of primary schools, construction of kgotla offices, school feeding and those funded under the Road Levy Fund as some of the projects and programmes that were being implemented.

Due to the challenges, Mr Tjetjoo said some of the said projects dated as far as the 2018/19 financial year.

He underscored the need for the council to strengthen project management and critically consider issues of capacity when planning for projects.

For ongoing projects, he said, a total of P240 798 566.80 had been allocated to the district and expenditure stood at P162 090 193.95, which translated to 67 per cent expenditure rate.

The civic leaders also learnt that following the COVID-19 pandemic, the council embarked on maintenance of existing ablution facilities, construction of hand washing stations, construction of water borne toilets, installation of water tanks and disposal bins.

Other projects included provision of cleaning materials and procurement of consumables such as toilet papers and hand sanitisers in primary schools as a preventive measure to COVID-19.

In response, some councillors requested the council management to consider construction of a fire station in Gumare in the next financial year to reduce workload on the Maun fire station.

They said the Maun fire station was overwhelmed and officers had to travel long distances to provide services.

They also decried the bad state of internal access roads in places such as Shakawe.

Cllr Lesedi Boy of Shakawe South stated that Shakawe was growing fast and at the same time experiencing development boom, yet the area had no access roads.

He, therefore, requested the council to consider gravelling some of the roads.

He also expressed happiness that Shakawe Service Centre had been included under the proposed recurrent budget for the 2021/22 financial year and wished the project could not be affected by the budget cut as the community had long awaited it.

Principal economic planner, Mr Bakang Molefi, advised councillors to include internal access roads in the constituency community funding.

He also noted the issue of fire station in Gumare would be looked into, noting that the project was big and could not be catered for under recurrent budget. ENDS