Africa-Press – Botswana. Acting President Slumber Tsogwane has called for stringent monitoring of rural development projects to ensure their sustainability.
Addressing members of the Rural Development Council yesterday, he said project monitoring was of paramount importance, consistent with the country’s aspiration of rural community livelihoods empowerment.
Mr Tsogwane noted with disappointment that RDC this year was unable to physically tour and monitor some of the projects under its portfolio, citing Tsabong abattoir and Lubu farm as some of the key project that required stringent monitoring.
“There are lots of innovation developments at Lubu farm that require the council’s monitoring for their prosperity and Lubu rain production technology programme is such project that has the potential to mitigate the drought situation in that area if well monitored,” the Vice President said.
Mr Tsogwane highlighted the need for the council to also introspect the manner in which current measures were addressing critical issues with the view to improve people’s livelihoods, adding that rural enterprise development was one of key priorities in dealing with rural development activities.
The aim, he said, was to draw lessons and put corrective measure in place to ensure project sustainability since such projects were intended to improve rural livelihoods by creating the much needed sustainable jobs.
“There is need for an update on interventions taken to address poor project implantation and management, and government cannot continue to invest in rural development while Batswana do not directly benefit from such investments,” he said.
Mr Tsogwane said there was need to reform and transform RDC since urbanisation had affected the rural areas.
He said it was against that background that RDC had set up a committee to monitor progress made on transformation of the council and align it with modernity.
“We need to deal with a suitable proposed model for community based projects that would effectively uplift the livelihoods of the intended beneficiaries,” he said.
Additionally, he highlighted the need for the council to be cautious of the effects of change on rural communities, specifically the anticipated drought season, adding that several relief measures were in place to cushion Batswana.
Mr Tsogwane said Parliament recently adopted a motion that called for an intervention to deal with the severity of drought effects, hence challenged the council to be at the forefront of implementing the motion.
He cautioned that the drought situation was also expected to escalate human-wildlife conflict due to migration of wildlife in search of water.
He said social protection programmes were also likely to be over stretched due to famine in many households, thus said RDC needed to be more vigilant and strive for a more prompt response to relief communities.
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