25 Nov 2013

Parliament has heard that implementation of the Ipelegeng programme in the Gaborone West North constituency is marred by corruption.

Debating the State-of-the Nation-Address in Parliament on November 20, the area MP, Mr Robert Masitara said Ipelegeng continued to make a positive impact on the livelihoods of many through providing short term employment support and relief, while at the same time carrying out essential development projects.

He said it was however disturbing to note that a number of village development committee chairpersons in his constituency were derailing the programme mandate as they did not follow the rightful procedure to issue out feeding tenders.

He said it had come to his attention that the Ipelegeng feeding tenders in the constituency were corruptly allocated to the VDC chairpersons and their allies, a thing which he said needed to be fully investigated as it denied other Batswana to benefit from the programme.

Mr Masitara also called for a law on asset repository of beneficiary ownership that would be used to store, manage and provide access to a set of reusable assets.

In addition, he said the same law would  monitor the ownership of all companies, trust funds and foundations in the country in order to clean up the system from corruption.

He said asset registry would shed some light on the legitimacy of the asset owners and guard against any corruption that might be aligned to the asset owner.

He indicated that the asset registry should not be only meant for those individuals in public domain but should also include all those who could afford procurement of valuable assets in the country.

With regard to  health services, Mr Masitara called for the upgrading of the Intensive Care Units ( ICUs) at Princess Marina Referral Hospital since the current ones could only accommodate a limited number of patients.

As a result, he said the hospital ended up referring to private hospitals, a move which had turned out to be costly for government. He said the understaffing at ICUs was also not in line with the WHO standards which clearly required a one to one, nurse-patient ration at ICUs.

He added that the work over loads at ICUs hindered the nursing staff to perform their duties diligently. ENDS