04 Oct 2023

Kgatleng District councillors have learnt that their council was not unique to the financial quagmire experienced by most councils across the country.

Deputy council secretary finance, Mr Lucky Maoto, told councillors on Friday during a full council meeting that budget provision for mandatory votes had suffered big time because of the ceiling they were compelled to work under.

He said the council was currently doing some justifications to ask for more funds for the council to continue with some mandatory works.

Mr Maoto’s sentiments followed a plethora of challenges raised by councillors that they were not serviced properly in their respective wards.

One of the complaints was that some schools in the remote area dweller (RADs) communities had more than a month without bread and that the school feeding programme was failing dismally because of inconsistent supply of some food items.

Councillors also said the agriculture and horticulture produce from local market had also failed because some school heads were not accountable to the money allocated for the food produce.

Councillors cited irregularities in accounting for the money including failure to retire the allocated money on time, to ensure continuous use of such funds.

They also complained that basic stationary was also not provided adequately in most primary schools and that for RADS communities learning was almost impossible.

On other issues, council learnt that government was working round the clock to ensure that ear tags were available for smooth running of the Botswana Animal Identification and Traceability System (BAITS) programme.

Kgatleng Principal Veterinary Officer, Dr David Kitose, said when answering councillors that the department was aware that the unavailability of ear tags greatly inconvenienced farmers, but asked them to be patient since the requirement was compulsory for selling their cattle.

Dr Kitose encouraged councillors to ask their constituents to institutionalise tagging their animals because the BAITS system provided a platform for farmers to provide information on their livestock which was essential for selling to European Union market and Botswana Meat Commission.

He said the BAITS was also important because it was used for other things including animal registration, transfer of ownership, arrival of livestock, veterinary drug treatments, adding that some were  pre-requisites for selling to the EU.

Regarding waiving the BAITS system for selling locally since the tags were unavailable, he said it was not feasible to do that because other farmers were in the habit of only tagging animals eligible for selling, whereas the animals should be tagged as early as six months.

Dr Kitose also said he noted councillors’ contributions that the livestock subsidy packages should be widened to include other items such as lucerne and lab lab. Ends