28 Feb 2021

Serowe Administration Authority (SAA) councillors are not impressed with the state of Serowe Radihemelo Grey Water Project.

The councillors were responding to an update on Serowe Radihemelo Grey Water project by the sub-district crop production officer, Mr Fredrick Rantsho during the sub-council session in Serowe recently. 

They said ever since the start of the Radihemelo grey water project, they had not seen anything happening there that could benefit the youth despite the motive of the project being to assist youth.

The councillors expressed worry about the loads of money used to develop the infrastructure at the site, yet not utilised to its full potential.

The councillors further said that the main objective of the project was to increase food production in the country and create employment for the youth, but it seemed the youth who had been allocated plots in the facility were not committed and had not shown any sense of ownership.  

Councillor for Palamaokuwe, Mr Gaatilwe Omphile said when the project started they were hopeful that it would help improve the lives of the youth and generate employment, but nothing positive had come out of it.

He said their expectations were shattered recently during the tour of the project because they found that nothing was happening.

He said although the project started in 2016, it was not making any profit and something had to be done to help the young farmers.

Councillor for Thabala/ Mogorosi, Mr Edward Gaefele said that it was disturbing to find that a lot of money was used to set up the project, but there were no results. 

He appealed to the relevant officers to do something to find out how they could help the young beneficiaries.       

Serowe Radihemelo Grey Water Project is a partnership between Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture Development (MYSC) and Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food Security (MOA).

Earlier on when briefing the councillors, Mr Rantsho said that MYSC disbursed P5 million to MOA to facilitate the development of the infrastructure for youth beneficiaries.

Mr Rantsho said the feasibility study identified 28 plots of about one hectare each and proposed installation of irrigation system to the first 16 plots as there was not enough waste water generated to irrigate all the 28 plots. 

He said the remaining plots were to be serviced in the second phase of the project.

Mr Rantsho further said during the time of plot allocation, 10 plots were consolidated to 2x5ha plots and allocated to two anchor farmers.

He however said the other  plots were re-aligned to produce eight  plots, which were allocated to young farmers identified by MYSC through the Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) incubation programme at Glen Valley.

He informed the councillors that currently six out of eight beneficiaries were operating at the project site and one had excused herself from the project as her interests were on tunnels not open fields. ends