23 Jul 2025

Inadequate budget has pushed the North West District Council (NWDC) to propose immediate suspension of hand stamping and temporarily scale down provision of some food commodities supplied to public primary schools. 

Supplementary food commodities such as apples and jam would be stopped while eggs would be given to learners once a week instead of three times a week. 

The NWDC chairperson, Mr Itumeleng Kelebetseng revealed this recently when briefing the media on the state of the council’s financial year 2025/26, noting that they have noted that their financial position was not improving as they were operating in negatives under school-feeding programme. 

He said they needed P70 million to feed 39 primary schools of which over P2 million was spent on feeding per month and currently they had only P6.5 million left. 

The situation, he said, was worrisome, as they have also had pending unpaid claims, which continued to pile up on a daily basis. 

With scaling down of some food commodities, Mr Kelebetseng highlighted that expenditure per month will be reduced from P2,629,337.17 to P1,102,478.00 relating to 42 per cent, which would ultimately lead to savings of P1,526,859.17 relating to 58 per cent.  While appreciating that government was aiming to improve child nutrition and education, he admitted that school-feeding programme faced several challenges such as inconsistent supply of food items as well as financial constraints.  

The school-feeding programme has been modified to include green produce consumption to prevent malnutrition, improve school attendance and promote nutrition education. Furthermore, he said they have not had sorghum for pounding in primary schools since 2023, therefore hand stampers have been assisting in some schools’ activities like toilets and class cleaning as well as sweeping grounds, duties that were done by cleaners in schools assisted by Ipelegeng workers. Mr Kelebetseng pointed out that about 206 hand stampers would be affected by the council’s decision but stated that the employees would not be retrenched, instead, he said they would be redeployed under Ipelegeng programme. 

Once the economy recovered, he said things would be normalised. 

On development projects, the council chairperson noted that NWDC needed an additional amount of P5,540,000 for the completion of the satellite school at Boro. He said construction of the school was awarded to a tune of P2.4 million following an approval by the then ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in March 2022 to a request by the then Member of Parliament for Maun West to prioritise the construction of a satellite school at Boro through savings from Constituency Community Projects (CCP) from 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 financial years. 

However, the proposed external works, he said, would include palisade fencing for the school, construction of two LA2 staff houses, Botswana Power Corporation connection, Water Utilities Corporation connection and electrical site reticulation. 

“The school is expected to start operating during third term, September 2025 with standard ones and those preparing to do standard one during 2026,” he added. 

Mr Kelebetseng also highlighted that the construction of new primary school at Senonnori Ward was almost complete as currently the contractor is attending to the defects and preparing to handover, the project on July 30. 

The project, he said, was 98 per cent complete and the contractor was completing storm water drainage and steel tanks. 

He said it was being constructed into two packages with the first one comprising construction of academic facilities, which has been awarded to LERS Electrical at a total cost of P56,874,127.61 and expenditure to date is P51,456,752.43. The council chairperson said the project started on January 8 2024 and scheduled for completion on the  July 13 this year but experienced delay. 

He said package 2, which comprised construction of staff housing facilities, has been awarded to Black Rubbie Properties at a total cost of P25 million and expenditure to date was P1,105,973.85 while the project was 65 per cent complete. The project commenced on the January  22 2024 and was scheduled to be complete on the September 29. Ends