11 Jan 2022

Residents of Patayamatebele, Ditladi and Shashe Bridge have been urged to fully participate in and contribute to the Constitutional Amendment Review process without any fear.

Addressing kgotla meetings in the three villages on Monday, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tati East,  Dr Douglas Letsholathebe advised the residents to take their time and positively contribute to the process, when the constitutional amendment team visits their area to collect their views and opinions.

Dr  Letsholathebe also encouraged his constituents to take part in the national population census, slated for later this year.

On other issues, the MP informed residents about President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s five priorities areas being: to fight COVID-19 by purchasing of vaccines; to re-align the arm of government with the President’s priorities and that of digitalisation, value addition and mindset change.

Meanwhile, he urged Batswana to increase the value of their products before selling them, to change the negative attitudes towards others and also change friends who enjoy undesirable attributes.

He also encouraged them to take small stock farming seriously as the government had already identified a lucrative foreign market for them, while the abattoir was ready to slaughter their stock.

On tertiary education financing, Dr Letsholathebe said the government spent more than P60 million on allowances for locally admitted students and more than P12 million on internationally-placed students.

Residents complained of human/wildlife conflict, especially elephants, saying they posed a threat to their lives and livelihoods as they damaged their crops.

They thus requested for a fence to separate grazing, wildlife and ploughing areas.

They also complained about shortage of water, high water bills, low Ipelegeng allowances; poor quality, but very expensive rations for destitute persons and poor internal roads.

In response to complaints, Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) Cluster Manager, Mr Ookeditse Israel attributed the low pressure to the process of transferring water from Tonota to places like Shashe Bridge through pipes.

Mr Israel noted that the other factor might be frequent electricity cuts and the growth of the village.

He explained that estimating metre readings was done when WUC employees could not access homes, where there were dogs or when workers could not read the metres due to unforeseen circumstances, among others.

He said during lock down, most of the readings were estimated.

Mr Israel said the prepaid water system did not work out as anticipated and as such WUC had to shelve it. Ends