GCC should set its priorities right

Mmegi Editor | Monday July 17, 2023 06:00

With about 1,000 delegates from the USA and Africa, Botswana hopes to impress some of the delegates and cut business deals that will possibly benefit the country in the long-term.

Through this event, Botswana has proven itself that it can pull a memorable event as it has a bigger dream of hosting international events as part of the current government’s transformational agenda.

The Summit is expected to create the much-needed awareness for the country to brand itself as one of the leading destinations in Africa in terms of meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions, the government has said.

It is the government’s wish that the Summit promoted the country’s image and created awareness of its value propositions on investment opportunities and incentives.

As they said, the Summit provided an opportunity for the country to profile itself as one of the most ideal investment destinations in Africa.

With that said and done, we have noted that the Summit has brought immediate good tides especially to motorists in the capital city, Gaborone. For the longest time, Gaborone has had a problematic network of roads requiring special attention.

The city roads are at their worst during the rainy season when they get flooded with water making them impassable whilst others have aged often times with their top layer peeling off, leaving the roads in a bad state of disrepair. Prior to the Summit, a good number of roads in the city were incomplete without the requisite road marks and with streetlights dysfunctional.

The Gaborone City Council (GCC) took its chances to impress international visitors after taking so long and punishing local road users who endured the bad potholes and roads generally in a bad state of disrepair. The streets were dark with dysfunctional lights just hanging above.

The GCC roads department employees were seen recently deployed to work long hours across the city (that is, even at night) to patch up potholes, mark the roads and put up new streetlights and repair old ones.

In some instances, some roads were duly expanded, something that could have long been done even without hosting the Summit. Whilst the works on the city roads are urgent, the attitude of the municipality is tantamount to playing to the gallery, as it seems such works could not have been executed had it not been for the Summit. We appeal to the City Mayor Austin Abraham and his team, that city dwellers that are also voters, are watching your council attitude with keen interest. To the taxpayers, the expectation is that your council has to be proactive in providing the requisite services rather than playing to the gallery. We urge you to improve the state of the roads in the city to render them all weather and duly traversable.

The sad reality is that you have sent a wrong message to the people that you are capable of delivering and it’s only that you choose to deliver when you like. Please change the way you serve the people, lest you become irrelevant.

Today's thought

“Good things happen when you get your priorities straight.”

– Scott Caan