Africa-Press – Botswana. Once fully operational, Milk Afric is expected to create more job opportunities from which Lobatse residents stand to benefit. Mayor of Lobatse, Mr Mosimanegape Dithebe said during a full council meeting on Tuesday that ‘the project was conceptualised in 2016, but could not operate due to varied reasons.
The project has so far employed 18 Lobatse residents and opportunities are anticipated to increase to 100 once the project becomes fully operational’, said.
Milk Afric is a state-of-the-art dairy production plant, which currently operates with 254 dairy cows purchased from local farmers. Mr Dithebe said the farm had future growth plans of 2 000 dairy cows.
Touching on another important project, he said the Lobatse Clay Works (LCW) which had not been operational for some years, would resume operations soon. He said the company had completed the refurbishment of its plant, which was currently under commissioning, saying recruitment was ongoing with Lobatse residents being prioritised.
Mr Dithebe said a total of 46 jobs opportunities had been created, adding that 118 job opportunities were envisaged to be created upon expansion of the operations. He added that LCW planned to increase participation of Lobatse companies in its value chain, which he stated was a good development.
Mr Dithebe said Delta Automotive Technologies, a Tier 1 manufacturer and supplier of high quality mission critical automotive components had relocated to Lobatse from South Africa. Delta Automotive Technologies also produces electric wiring harnesses and battery cables for vehicle manufacturers such as Nissan and Volkswagen,
“The relocation of the manufacturing plant from South Africa to Lobatse is a welcome development that has created over 300 jobs locally. We are looking forward to expansion of the plant and increased job opportunities as well as up-skilling of more employees with higher value manufacturing skills,” he said.
Furthermore, Mr Dithebe said Lobatse also benefited from the Transitional National Development Plan through the implementation of among others, three projects, which were executed through the Development Manager Model (DMM).
The projects, consisting of 53 staff housing units for Botswana Police Service, refurbishment of Athlone Hospital and design and construction of the Lobatse leather park, were at different stages of procurement with drawings for the police project having Mr Dithebe added that in an endeavour to effectively and efficiently manage implementation of DMM projects at district level, a District Catalyst Project team was set up to promptly address project implementation challenges, improve communication between stakeholders and provide oversight.
The mayor said some non-DMM projects were being implemented through various government programmes such as Constituency Community Projects (CCP) which delivered a couple of projects such as maintenance of internal roads, provision of storm water drainage system, solar street lighting, tower lights and a bus rank bridge, which was done in partnership with Botswana Railways.
He added that the funds for backlog eradication in primary schools was utilised to construct a classroom block and a toilet block at New Look Primary School and another toilet block at Ipeleng Primary School.
He noted that projects such as the construction of Maokana events shelter, procurement of a fire engine and construction of double storey flats staff housing at Motswedi had encountered compounding challenges leading to non and/or delayed implementation.
He attributed the challenges to, among others, lack of funding, procurement glitches, poor performance by contractors and litigation, adding, however, that various corrective and preventative measures were being undertaken to address the issues.
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