Africa-Press – Botswana. The first lady, Ms Neo Masisi is expected to be the guest and chief walker at the 5th Mascom Batanani walk slated for August this weekend.
Mascom acting head of Communications and Public Relations Officer, Ms Barbara Gotlop announced at the handing over of a Tower in Tonota that this year’s walk themed “Drugs and Substance abuse” was aimed at supporting and sensitising Batswana on drugs and substance abuse.
“We hope to bring light to key challenges arising from this and take a step together towards building a drug free community,” she said.
Ms Gotlop therefore appealed to residents of Francistown and surrounding areas to participate in the walk and support the First Lady towards the noble initiative.
Batanani is a Kalanga word, meaning Tshwaragano in Setswana or unite in English to signify the importance of united action for positive change.
Ms Gotlop explained that driven by the principle of ‘Change Starts with You’, the concept of Batanani was that everyone could be an agent of change. The Batanani walk was launched in 2019 with an objective to drive positive change in the society and is one of the most anticipated charity events in Botswana. It features walks in 15km, 10 km and five (5) km categories. Meanwhile, the MP for Tonota,Mr Pono Moatlhodi appealed to the organisers of the event to include residents of Tonota in the walk. He said due to the village’s proximity to Francistown, Tonota was inundated with substance abuse cases.
Mr Moatlhodi said Tonota like most if not all villages had been hit by the social ills such as drug and alcohol abuse, theft and gender based violence, and that being included in the these kind of events would help enlighten the residents on the setbacks of these social ills and how to overcome them.
“Drugs and substance abuse have become a crisis in Tonota constituency, as drugs such as marijuana and CAT are easily accessible,” he added.
He said it was disheartening that drugs and substance abuse had found their way into schools, especially at Shashe River School and called on parents to play their role in education of their children.
Mr Moatlhodi further stated that if the situation was left unattended to it could escalate.
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