Jwaneng council sticks to efficiency
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday February 22, 2022 06:00
According to Ditsie, some of the motions that will be discussed include JTC requesting the Ministry of Basic Education (MoBE) to consider establishing a non-formal education facility in the mining town and that Jwaneng council resolves to identify sites for driving schools for their lessons on a rental basis.
The others are for the council to recognise the need for provision for public squares within individual neighbourhoods and undertake full assessment for these celebratory spaces to facilitate their formalisation in Jwaneng and for the MoBE to consider raising school fees for non-citizens in all government schools.
“Since our council is not big and we are not that many, there is the possibility that motions could take one day and a half. Usually, questions do not take long to respond to like in other councils and council reports also take half a day,” Ditsie said. “Even if at times two days is not enough, we try our best to address all important issues on those days. Sometimes the workload does force us to go to the third day if motions are not complete. The other thing that affects our council is financial constraints that affect our delivery.”
She said financial constraints hampered their daily services such as streetlights, and maintenance of facilities such as public toilets.
“There was a time when we were forced to close public toilets due to lack of funds to maintain them, but we had to outsource and now they are operated by individuals who maintain them as per council agreement,” she said.
The mayor added that due to financial constraints, the resealing of landfill road plan was to do 4.05km with a double seal, but it was scaled down to 3.35km double seal as the remaining 700 metres will be a single seal.
Despite the challenges, she said they managed to achieve some of their plans because they seek help from Debswana, which operates a mine in the township, which helps a lot.
Ditsie revealed that such assistance include fuel supply by the Debswana Jwaneng Mine. The assistance came after there was a period when JTC was struggling to collect household waste due to shortage of fuel.
The full virtual council meeting will be held from February 22-23, 2022.