22 Oct 2020

Councillors need to have in-depth knowledge of every project on the ground as their mandate is to be solution-oriented, chairperson of  Serowe Administration Authority Performance Monitoring Committee (PMC) Councillor Kaywa Namoshe has said. 

    Briefing councillors during a one-day tour of ongoing development projects at Mogorosi, Thabala, Mabuo and Moiyabana primary schools this week, Mr Namoshe said the visit would give them the knowledge they needed to contribute to service delivery in the communities they were representing.

 He said leaders had the responsibility to ensure that public funds were used as planned and projects undertaken as approved by the council.

 Such visits would ensure that all projects were executed on time and within budget, said Mr Namoshe.

 He said the council found it fit to take councillors on a projects tour because they needed to know and appreciate challenges encountered by contractors engaged by the council so that they would be in a position to come up with solutions. 

The main purpose of the tour was for councillors to get firsthand information rather than relying on progress reports from officials, he explained. 

He said site visits would help them to see if projects status  on the ground corresponded with what was on paper.

Another purpose, he said, was to enlighten councillors on project funding further explaining that they were financed from different sources including Constituency Development Fund, Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) and the council recurrent budget.

However councilors expressed disappointment with regard to non-functioning gas stoves in all school kitchens which had remained unused since installation.

They found the pots used were too heavy for the stoves. 

At Thabala Primary School, there was a challenge of low water pressure while at Moiyabana some teachers’ houses remain uncompleted and several were infested with bats.

Council quantity surveyor, Ms Lebang Sechi, said the municipality was unable to undertake major works due to financial constraints. 

She said the COVID-19 pandemic had contributed  to the  slowing down of projects. Ends