Africa-Press – Botswana. Development Plan 9 and Urban Development Plan 5 have commenced. The exercise had been suspendedd to pave way for the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP) which was introduced to allow for alignment of development plans with emerging reforms by government.
The TNDP, which is coming to an end in March 2025, was aimed at supporting the fulfillment of Vision 2036 and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the country’s economy.
“I urge you to take part in this noble exercise as this will facilitate positive response to our community development needs,” said the Mayor of Selebi Phikwe Mr Lucas Modimana during the Selebi Phikwe Town Council (SPTC) full council meeting on Tuesday.
Consultations for the UDP5 in particular are expected to commence today. Touching on the council’s development budget, Mr Modimana said it would cover Constituency Community Projects (CCP), Destitute Housing and Primary Schools Backlog Eradication with reception classes at Segomotso, Boitumelo and Tebogo primary schools.
The budget, he said would also cover primary schools maintenance at Joseph Anderson Primary School and the Ipelegeng programme.
“It is worth noting that there has been an increase in the Ipelegeng programme budget from over P13 000 to over P18 000 translating to 39 per cent increase.”
Mr Modimana explained that this would cater for increased monthly quota from 1601 to 1701 beneficiaries and the sustenance component which was also envisaged to start in June 2024.
The recurrent budget has also seen an increase from P157 725 to P181 544 translating to 15 per cent increase from last year’s budget.
This slight increase, Mr Modimana said, would cater for among other things, councillors’ terminal benefits and also key areas of concern such as maintenance of facilities.
On implementation of projects, he said eight of the 10 CCP projects had been completed whilst two were ongoing.
Mr Modimana said there were four planned projects under the Road Levy, with only one complete.
Furthermore he highlighted that the long awaited project of paving and storm water construction on Rebecca street had been awarded to Bahumi Communications to the tune of over P3.1m.
“This is a spillover project that has long been funded through the 2019/2020 road levy programme,” he said.
The mayor added that tender process for the project faced delays due to appeals and court proceedings. “The contract has been signed and the contractor is currently preparing to mobilise and commence work on site.”
For their part councillors thanked Mr Modimana for the update but raised concern over ministries that fail to act on their requests.
They complained that they had passed many motions and wrote questions to various ministries but only a few ministries had responded.
They appealed to the Mayor to find ways to engage with the concerned ministries because lack of feedback impacted negatively on their day to day duties.
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