Africa-Press – Botswana. Okavango District Council leadership should prioritise and support income-generating businesses.
The sentiments were expressed by the councillors when commenting on the brief by the chairperson Mr Gaopalelwe Ronald during the opening of the full council meeting on Tuesday.
Nominated councillor Mr Lekonne Masoko implored the council to utilise resources available to change the status quo of the district, which was said to be among the poorest in the country.
Mr Masoko said it was imperative for the district council to restore agriculture as the mainstay of Batswana. He therefore, said the council should consider exploring agricultural businesses in areas such as Etsha that had fertile land for farming.
He said keeping chicken layers, broilers and establishment of abattoirs were some areas for council to explore. He also called for monitoring of business programmes given to members of community to ensure that they do not collapse.
Mr Masoko said council budget overview by the chairperson’s brief pointed to an annual decline in the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) hence the district should broaden own revenue generation avenues.
Nominated councillor, Mr Kaukapita Kaukapita said it was a concern that the district did not have regional offices such as departments of tourism and immigration including senior officers at the level of regional coordinators and directors. He said such offices were crucial to the development of the district.
He said there were some industrial plots long allocated in Gumare about 16 years ago but were not developed and no enforcement carried out in that regard even though developments of such plots could had revived the economy of the district.
Mr Kaukapita said only five plots out of the 48 industrial plots allocated in Gumare were developed, while none of the 58 plots allocated in Shakawe in 2005 were developed.
Mr Ronald said in his brief that the approved recurrent budget was over P236 million with over P225 million from RSG. He said total expenditure in the first quarter was above P12 million.
He said the total income collected was over P119 000 against a quarterly target of P327 000.
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