14 Feb 2023

Government has been urged to ensure that the recent upgrading of sub-districts across the country to fully-fledged districts comes with enough human resource as well as additional office space.

Contributing to the debate on the proposed budget for the 2023/2024 financial year on Monday, Assistant Minister of Heath, also Member of Parliament for Boteti East, Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe indicated that without such provisions, the upgrading would be in vain.

“If we fail to provide additional offices and human resource, then this upgrading will only be in name.

It is however promising because deputy district commissioners and senior assistant council secretaries are currently acting for the positions of fully-fledged districts,” he said.

Mr Lelatisitswe also said the upgrading of the sub-districts was an indication that the ruling party was honest in its promises to Batswana, especially that the budget focused more on projects such as road networks and water distribution, which Batswana had long called for.

He also welcomed the planned upgrading of Letlhakane Primary Hospital as well as the construction of a maternity wing at Mokubilo Clinic, hence urged those responsible for the implementation of such projects to ensure they were delivered on time as they were vital to the area.

Mr Lelatisitswe also urged government to consider construction of a water treatment plant at Letlhakane to help desalinate water from Lucara Mine to potable standards for distribution to villages in the area.

On issues of education, Mr Lelatisitswe called on government to construct more schools in the area to help decongest others such as Rakops Junior Secondary School, which he suggested could even be turned into a unified school.

For his part, Serowe North MP, Mr Baratiwa Mathoothe decried what he termed poor government’s revenue collection, which he said had been the case over the years and led to loss of funds.

“Government needs to do a lot to correct such an anomaly because the funds we lose through poor monitoring are the very funds that we need to finance projects,” he said.Mr Mathoothe also complained that the P100 increment of the old age pension was too low as the elderly were responsible for taking care of their grandchildren in the absence of the parents.

On the issue of value chain from local product, Mr Mathoothe urged government to assist set up an oil refinery plant at Pandamatenga farms, where he said sunflower was grown in abundance.

He said such would assist the country to reduce reliance on cooking oil imports, and would also help Botswana export to central Africa as Pandamatenga was on an international route. ENDS