07 Jun 2021

Social and Community Development (S&CD) principal officer from Maun Administration Authority (MAA), Ms Kebaneilwe Leselamose says COVID-19 had brought about a lot of challenges.

Ms Leselamose made the observation when briefing the MP for Maun West, Mr Dumelang Saleshando at a meeting with government departments on recently.

She said the department received overwhelming numbers of people who required assistance due to job losses, adding that the department was not able to assist all due to limited resources.

“Sometimes we have to prioritise and assist pupils with school uniforms over people who need food baskets,” Ms Leselamose said.

She said even assessing prospective beneficiaries was also a challenge due to shortage of staff and transport, leading to resorting to mass assessment.

The other solution, she said was to review people already in the social welfare programme who were able bodied enough to exit the programme to make way for others to benefit.

Ms Leselamose said MAA had received 609 cases of people needing assistance by October last year, saying there was need for relief packages to assist some families that were critically affected.

She said the other challenge was shortage of those qualified to offer psychosocial support as the MAA S&CD department had only 26 such officers, as opposed to the many cases that required psychosocial support caused by job losses and gender based violence (GBV).

Regarding GBV, she said there was need for more places of safety in Maun, saying there was only one such in Maun.

For her part, Ngami Regional Health Management Team acting coordinator, Dr Sandra Maripe-Ebutswe said delays in the completion of the Maun General Hospital project affected the team’s efforts in the fight against COVID-19.

Dr Maripe-Ebutswe said there was need for a surgeon, revealling that Ngamiland District had not had one for five years, leading to patients being referred to Nyangabgwe in Francistown or Princes Marina in Gaborone, which was costly.

For his part, Mr Saleshando observed that lack of resources was a common challenge across departments, compounded by the fact that government was cash-strapped, adding however that some challenges required change in policies. Ends