23 Sep 2020

Kgatleng District Council chairperson says two of the council’s four graders are expected to resume operations.

Addressing a full council session recently, Mr Daniel Molokwe said since beginning of this financial year, the council had not been able to grade any road due to breakdown of its graders.

“However, we are working round the clock to bring those machines back on the road,” he said. He said a prioritised grading schedule would be made available to councillors and would be updated from time to time in line with availability of the machines.

“I am aware that this plant situation has left most of our roads across the district in a very bad state,” he said.

Speaking on community constituency projects, Mr Molokwe said the roads division was implementing 10 spill over projects across the district at a value of P4 406 500.67.

He noted that three of these were the 2017/18 spill over projects valued at P1 191 666. 66, two of them being paving works at Kgomodiatshaba and Bophirima.

The council chairperson said four projects were spill overs from the 2018/19 financial year; drainage works in Oodi, Malolwane, Boseja North and Bophirima valued at P2 011 068.86.

Mr Molokwe said the Boseja project was nearing completion while contractors for Oodi drainage were handed site last week.

“Malolwane and Bophirima projects await availability of the excavation machinery for correction of drainage levels,” he continued. He went on to inform councilors that the last three projects are 2019/20 spill over drainage projects in Mabalane, Sikwane and Rasesa valued at P1 203 765.15.

Mr Molokwe indicated that the Mabalane/Sikwane drainage projects have been consolidated with the road levy fund project and are at vetting stage while procurement for portal culverts for Rasesa drainage is ongoing.

“All these projects are expected to be completed by end of the financial year,” he said.

Furthermore, Mr Molokwe said the council was implementing two installation of solar street lighting projects in Artesia and Leshibitse valued at P861 583.32.

He said tenders for these projects were re-advertised after being affected by the COVID-19 lockdown.

He said following outsourcing of streetlight maintenance in Mochudi, a decision was made to privatise all streetlight maintenance in the district but this has been affected by budget cuts and therefore would not be undertaken during the current financial year.

“I previously indicated that this initiative has shown tremendous improvement of illumination in Mochudi where it was done hence a decision to roll it out to rest of the district,” he said.

Mr Molokwe said all streetlight maintenance works would now be carried out in-house and he is aware that council already has some street circuits which need maintenance.

He assured councilors that council has since placed orders for supply of maintenance spares and he believes upon delivery of such, an improvement on streetlights illumination levels will be realized.

The council chairman said two traffic light junctions, Pilane and Raserura, are not working while the A1/Bokaa junction was deliberately placed on a flashing mode for the junction to operate as a four-way.

Mr Molokwe said this was necessitated by the alarming rate of traffic accidents due to traffic conflict caused by lack of right-turning arrows.

He said efforts to acquire capital from the road levy fund to rehabilitate and upgrade the infrastructure to modern controllers were not successful.

However, he said council has been directed by their ministry to rehabilitate the same using salvaged Movac 3 spares from Gaborone City Council who are replacing all their old infrastructure through an ongoing centralized traffic control project.

Mr Molokwe said since August 28, council has managed to fit all required hardware at junctions and are currently programming the hardware. Ends