01 Sep 2022

The Department of Veterinary Services has imposed a movement restriction for all cloven hoof animals within the North East District.

The department has also suspended exports of fresh meat and raw animal products following the suspected outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in the area.

Consequently, Tati East MP, Dr Douglas Letsholathebe has urged Matopi residents to exercise due care and listen to the advice of veterinary officials to stop further spread of the disease.

Dr Letsholathebe made the call in a kgotla meeting he addressed on Wednesday.

“Let us comply with veterinary officials at Sekokwe veterinary gate to stop the spread of the disease,” he pleaded.

He informed residents that the Minister of Agriculture, Mr Fidelis Molao would visit Butale next week to further engage farmers on the matter.

Still at the meeting, Dr Letsholathebe implored citizens who did not have Omang to contact relevant officials to deal with the matter.

On residents’ complaints about the Water Utilities Corporation (WUC), Dr Letsholathebe promised that he would get to the bottom of the matter during a meeting with the corporation leadership.

Furthermore, Dr Letsholathebe told residents that government was working round the clock to mitigate against dire shortage of drugs at health facilities, something he blamed on procuring entities engaged by government.

On missed tourism opportunities due to the delay to turn the Robelela/Matopi road to bitumen standard, the MP asked Matopi residents to be patient saying funds permitting, government would consider tarring the road.

Residents also learned that service providers, among them, Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC), Orange Botswana as well as Mascom had been asked to see how they could improve their communication infrastructure in the area.

On other issues, Dr Letsholathebe challenged young people to take advantage of the embargo that government had placed on certain vegetables by earnestly taking to farming to ensure both employment creation and food security for the nation.

On tertiary sponsorship, Dr Letsholathebe, who is also Minister of Education and Skills Development, told residents that a lion’s share of P3.4 billion was disbursed towards students’ sponsorship.

Funds, according to Dr Letsholathebe, however fell short as an extra P240 million was needed to re-sponsor students who could not finish their studies for several reasons. 

Such students, he said included those who failed in their studies at various levels.

“We have only been able to secure P100 million and this calls for reset on our part to deal with the issue so that more students could get sponsorship,” he said. 

He has thus called on parents to encourage their children to take their education seriously so that they would not become a burden to government.

The MP’s words were echoed by North East coordinator in the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sport and Culture, Ms Onthatile Takamona who indicated that horticulture presented a huge opportunity for the youth to eke a living. To that end, Ms Takamona implored young people to apply for funding.

Meanwhile, in their comments, some residents complained about delays to tar the Robelela/Matopi road saying they were losing out on the tourism potential that came with such an infrastructure.

Residents had also raised concerns about the poor maintenance of the border fence, saying it made their cattle to easily wander away into the Zimbabwean side and were never recovered.

They also wanted the Ministry of Agriculture to reconsider its stance on bolus for easy identification in the even that cattle were stolen.

They were also not happy about the ear tags currently in use, arguing that cattle rustlers easily tampered with them to blot-out identification of stolen animals. ends