23 Sep 2020

The Mayor of Francistown Mr Godisang Radisego says NMCJ International has been awarded a contract to develop Old Tatitown primary school into a private primary school, hospitality college and a boutique hotel.

Addressing the Francistown City Council full meeting on Monday, Mr Radisego said the council resolved in 2010, to dispose the unutilised primary school through a long term lease.

He explained that several efforts to lease it failed until in April 2020 when NMCJ International was awarded the contract.

Mr Radisego stated that the contract was still under 18 months’ grace period and the company was in the process of registering the plot lease for project financing and security.

On other issues, the mayor said the COVID-19 pandemic was devastating the economy and posed a threat to humanity.

He explained that it was crucial to curb the spread of the pandemic because it was negatively affecting the national coffers thereby reducing the ability to implement planned projects and programmes.

The mayor also briefed councilors on a number of programmes and projects currently being undertaken in the city under the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) and infrastructural development and maintenance.

He explained that ESP was implemented in order to fast tract provision of infrastructure as well as creation of employment as a way to stimulate the economy after the 2008 global recession.

Mr Radisigo explained that it remained the duty of the City of Francistown to provide and maintain quality infrastructure which was important to achieve customer satisfaction.

“Since the beginning of the plan period, focus has been on primary school facilities, maintenance of roads and constituency community programme,” he said.

Noting the importance of data in implementing evidenced based planning, he said the council was involved in the Sustainable Development Goal 11 project.

The United Nations have developed SDGs and under SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), it aims to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

“It is for this reason that we are part of the project named SDG11, monitoring and reporting on human settlements indicators in Africa and Latin America,” he said.

Mr Radisego explained that the project supported design of monitoring tools to improve the availability and access to data and statistics at rural and urban level.

He said Botswana and Tunisia were fortunate to have been chosen to pilot the project in Africa.

“As such the project is piloted in the two cities of our two countries and the City Property Index (CPI) was used to measure performance of Goal Number 11 indicators which in turn demonstrated the prosperity level of each,” he said. Ends