14 Jun 2022

 Village Development Committees (VDC) have the mandate to advancing developmental agenda at community level, newly elected Mahalapye umbrella Village Development Committee chairperson, Mr Boniface Disho has said in an interview with BOPA.

To achieve their mandate, he said, VDC as a team must subscribe to a collective vision, and as team leader his vision was to capacitate Mahalapye VDCs to execute mandate, by broadening their understanding through targeted trainings and bench markings.

He hoped in the long term VDCs would attract diverse professions and expertise to help advance community development agenda.

He said the perception that VDC was for old people, retired and unlearned was outdated, adding that such had been a hindrance to lure expertise and people willing to do voluntarily work for communities. “The umbrella visited Mahalapye VDCs to identify their strengths, gaps and challenges.” He said the visitations were necessary to address non-implementation common in committees.

To function effectively, Mr Disho stated that the VDC committee should develop strategic plan and annual plans for their community, mobilise the community to identify projects, coordinate community voluntary organisations and local agencies to enhance effective planning and implementation, monitoring of projects as well as representing the community in development matters and be a reference point in matters pertaining to community development.

He said a SWOT analysis helped to uncover VDC strength. Explaining community relationship, he said communities had always regarded VDCs as integral institution and structure to pride themselves with.

He further said community members were so protective to the structure that wherever there were issues of misconduct within committees, the community would raise their displeasures without any hesitations. He added that such then called on committee members not to just view themselves as ordinary, but as leaders who should conduct themselves in acceptable manners.

On challenges faced by umbrella VDC, he cited huge budget in secretarial services, stationery with no costs reduction plans in place. He said some members were not fully aware of their mandate while some neglected mandate.

Responding to how the committee was prepared to address the challenges, Mr Disho said a code of conduct draft was in place to guide the committee. He promised annual VDC conferences, so as to help committees learn from the best practices and bench marking from others. The conference, he said would resolve on initiatives to help capacitate committees.

For ease of work; he said there was need for office computers, printers, and internet connectivity. He implored the businesses and government departments with unutilised equipment to donate to the VDC. Having ICT equipment would cut costs, because VDCs were using a lot of funds yearly by outsourcing secretarial services.

“The chairship has secured a partnership with MYSC through our local Library to train all committees’ secretaries, treasurers, chairpersons on ICT under Sesigo Programme and they are to commence in due course,” Mr Disho expressed.

He added that visitations by umbrella VDC with council authorities, will assess progress and how to nurture and capacitate committees. On finance, the Umbrella VDC chairperson said lack of funds to run the umbrella VDC office was a big challenge and a hindrance to coordination of VDCs.

He furthermore said they were formulating a resource mobilisation plan for the office, and he appealed to potential donors to come forward and assist the with office furniture. He said VDCs were no longer just ceremonial committees, but were institutions that should be accorded support to effectively play their role in the developmental agenda.

He urged Ministry of Local Government to look into re-tooling VDCs, strengthen capacity through trainings and engaging agencies like BNPC to help shape VDCs focus. He said remuneration of members ought to be reviewed, considering the nature of work they did. ENDS