22 Mar 2022

The Ministry of Transport and Communications needs over P1.4bn for road infrastructure projects in the 2022/23 financial year.

Transport and communications minister, Mr Thulagano Segokgo revealed this when he presented the ministry’s budget estimates for the 2022/2023 financial year on Monday.

Mr Segokgo requested Parliament to approve over P1.81bn in recurrent expenditure and over P1.87bn in development expenditure.

He said roads infrastructure projects would be allocated the largest share of the development expenditure at P1.42bn.

“Major projects to benefit are BITP projects (upgrading three round-abouts, traffic signal modernisation and central traffic control for greater Gaborone and OPRC packages), Mulambakwena-Tshesebe, A1 dualling,  Lobatse-Boatle, Motopi-Makalamabedi and Nata-Maun to mention a few,” he said.

Mr Segokgo said the ministry deferred the development of 1 153km of roads infrastructure around the country in the current financial year due to financial constraints.  

He added that 585km would now be developed through the public private partnership arrangement.

He, however, said the ministry successfully completed implementation of Gaborone-Boatle Highway, upgrading of Dibete-Mookane-Machaneng and Tshimoyapula-Mabeleapudi roads, among others.

The minister added that over P346m from the 2022/2023 financial year budget would be allocated to Information Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure projects.

Under the recurrent expenditure, he said the Department of Information Technology (DIT) would be allocated 29 per cent of the budget, Central Transport Organisation (CTO) 26 per cent, while 18 per cent would be allocated to the Department of Road Transport and Safety (DRTS).

Also, Mr Segokgo told Parliament that the ministry was implementing three infrastructure development programmes aimed at driving Universal Access and Services.

“The programmes are the international connectivity to improve Botswana’s connectivity to the rest of the world, the National Backbone to connect villages or towns to one another and the Local Access Network,” he said.

He added that through the Universal Access and Services programme, the ministry facilitated upgrading of mobile communications infrastructure to the high speed third and fourth generation technologies in 68 villages across Ghanzi and Kgalagadi districts, as well as Mabutsane Sub-district.

He added that further projects were ongoing in Kweneng, North West and Southern districts.

“Following the upgrades all schools in these districts would be accordingly connected to the internet and supplied with required educational tablets and related ICT gadgets.

These are planned to all be completed by the end of 2022/23 financial year,” he said.

Mr Segokgo added that the Optic Fibre development project was also progressing well, as well as the SmartBots connectivity initiative, with 383 sites installed and 245 activated.

He added that the programme to install public Wi-Fi hotspots in key strategic areas was progressing well, with 16 localities covered with Wi-Fi hotpots to date.

“We are in the process of establishing 85 new Wi-Fi hotpots.

Deployment of public Wi-Fi hotpots in post offices across the country is also ongoing, and currently 34 public Wi-Fi infrastructures have been installed in post offices,” he said.

He further said BoFiNet was constructing a state of the art carrier data centre in Gaborone, which would enable safe storage and access to efficient digital platforms for government, the public and business entities.

He said the facility was earmarked for operation next month.

He, however, said the ministry was greatly concerned by the status of government ICT infrastructure and services.

He said the government data centre responsible for hosting critical services and applications was in a poor state characterised by perennial system breakdowns and failure.

“This is because the equipment is obsolete and the data centre was constructed with no proper cooling and power.

To address these challenges the project to relocate the data centre to the newly constructed digital data centre owned by BoFiNet has commenced with the planning and design activities ongoing,” he said.

The minister added that government had approved the assets separation and transfer from utility companies and Broadcasting Services to BoFiNet to encourage infrastructure sharing.

He said the move would facilitate open access to power, water and communication infrastructure by all operators funded through public funds.

The transfer is expected to be completed in June.

On the aviation sector, he said passenger movement declined by 87.9 per cent in this financial year due to COVI-19.

He, however, said there was now an indication of recovery of the sector. ENDS