03 Dec 2020

Poverty eradication efforts are reported to be bearing fruits in the southern district despite some hiccups.

Presenting a poverty eradication report to the District Development Committee on December 3, the district’s poverty eradication coordinator Mr Kenalemang Tebele said they conducted an assessment that was intended to give an overview on progress achieved in the implementation of the poverty eradication programme in Southern District during second quarter of 2020/2021 covering four sub-districts being Goodhope, Mabutsane, Moshupa and Kanye Administrative Authority.

He noted  a decrease in the number of people awaiting funding from 2 030 to 1 813.

This, Mr Tebele said was due to the ongoing beneficiary profiling exercise which had revealed that some beneficiaries were deceased whereas some’s  economic status had improved while others had already benefited on other available government programmes.

Furthermore, he said all poultry layers’ beneficiaries supplied local primary schools in their respective areas with eggs on weekly basis, adding some sub-districts had monitored projects during the second quarter and from those visited, 61 were operational while 26 were non-operational.

Though successful projects had been registered in the region he said there are some which are non-operational, pointing there are 14 machinery projects in the Southern District of which five of the said number are non-operational; these are Morama and Oil processing machines at Mabutsane, Pellet Making and Hydroponics at Goodhope, and ice making machine in Kanye. 

He said the Tlhomamo toilet paper project in Goodhope was operational and manned by 13 beneficiaries. He shared that the project sold toilet paper to both government institutions and the community.

However, the project is in the process of acquiring a trade license, tax clearance and Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) certificate.  

Itsoseng Kgalagadi Sand bricks molding project in Phitshane-Molopo is reported to be doing well and run by 16 beneficiaries. They have been contracted to supply 50 000 bricks to Moshupa Primary hospital project. 

According to Mr Tebele power cuts were posing a challenge as outages could last the whole day which affected production. 

Pitsane Egg Trays based in Pitsane is run by a sole beneficiary and trading as Barolong Pitsane Egg Trays, he said. 

The production machine had broken down therefore there had been no production during this quarter. General purpose mixer-liquid sachet (Ice pops) project based in Ramatlabama is run by four beneficiaries. He shared that challenges included sourcing raw materials. The poverty eradication office had intended to diversify the project through production of juice. 

Pellet Making machine based at Phitshane Molopo is not operational. Mr Tebele’s report further noted that the technician who facilitated the training indicated that the production area was too small and not properly ventilated. 

It is therefore against this backdrop that the two plots had been allocated by Phitshane-Molopo Sub land board, Mr Tebele said, adding the issue to consolidate the two plots into one had been escalated to Physical Planning office for assistance.

He said laundry bar soap and liquid detergents project based at Mabule was operational, and run by six beneficiaries. They had successfully re-registered the business and trading as Motswedi liquid detergents and bar soap production. 

The programme coodinator also told the committe that the diamond mesh wire project in Dikhukhung was operational and trading as Isago Diamond Mesh. It has seven beneficiaries. 

The installation and testing of the machine was done in July and it is now able to produce fence automatically.

He said hydroponics project at a Modern Farm in Hebrone was non-operational. 

However, Mr Tebele said the project glitches had been debated in previous District Development Committee meetings and resolutions were presented to the Plan Management Committee.

Toilet Paper Production in Moshupa is operational and it did not perform as expected both in terms of production and sales during this quarter, he said.

He said there had been 21054 units produced as opposed to 64317 in the first quarter, 10088 sold as opposed to 46287 in the first quarter. 

He said Pitseng Washing Powder Machine project, run by 11 beneficiaries, was operational. 

Mabutsane Oil Processing Machine project is currently  non-operational. However, benchmarking was ongoing with a purpose to familiarise the beneficiaries with the best practices on production and cleaning of equipment so that they could resume production, he said.

He said the Morama Processing Machine project at Maokane was as non-operational. ends