18 Jun 2023

Batswana have been called to shun vandalism and theft of copper cables that costs government millions of money for replacement.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Dr Kekgonne Baipoledi said this on Thursday, following the tour of Masama Wellfield and pipeline to check the progress on the maintenance works carried out at the well fields as well as appreciate the water infrastructure.

Dr Baipoledi said the well fields were meant to sustain Batswana and that any intentions to destroy such high investment infrastructure was highly regretted and that it should come to an end.

“This vandalism touches to the core of our hearts. Batswana pay huge amount of tax for the resources that are supposed to sustain us,” he said.

He said the ministry was concerned about vandalism that continued to milk the corporation huge sums of money totalling over P4 million that had been spent in replacement of copper cables, and a further P1.8million for security that has been deployed to guard the wellfield.

“For the corporation to be spending P150 000 for security alone in one month was highly regretted and unfortunate,” he said.

In that regard, Dr Baipoledi called on Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) not to relent and join forces with security organs to fight such crime.

“Let us continue to protect the resources with any other people willing to help us to protect this investment that should take us years into the future,” he said.

Furthermore, Dr Baipoledi said the vandalism affected the amount of water that should be supplied from Masama.

Meanwhile, WUC’s Head of Business Centre, Mr Kebaabetswe Mogami said the Masama wellfield comprises 56 boreholes, three pump stations, four storage tanks, telemetry work, network of pipelines, and power distribution network.

He said the design capacity of the Masama scheme was to pump 64million litres of water per day to address water deficit in the southern part of the country.

Regarding vandalism, he said private security companies has been dispatched at strategic boreholes to carry out night patrols at both Masama East and West.

Mr Mogami further said in some boreholes, WUC has since resorted to using aluminum cables instead of copper, which he said were less attractive to criminals. ENDS