Kgosi Maforaga bemoans villagers� poor attendance

Bonte Seepi | Friday March 11, 2016 14:41

 

. The committee is supposed to lead the BOT50 Independence celebration preparations.

The few who attended the meeting were presented a report on how 2015 funds were used. The committee which led the 2015 independence celebrations received P52,860.72 from the Palapye Administrative Authority, P11,212.30 from the District Commissioners’ office and donations totalling to P1,930 from different companies. After presentation of the budget, the people who attended the meeting decided not to go ahead with elections of the BOT50 celebrations preparations committee. The reason was that this year’s Independence celebration is  bigger hence it needs the community to decide who should lead them.

Patricia Kgakge, who is a community social worker in the village, said people in other villages have moved forward with the BOT50 preparations. She said it is only in Palapye where the community is relaxed and not interested in the preparations for the event. “The people of Palapye must get involved during all the preparations of BOT50 and we should make our own  village beautiful.

 “Let’s get into this work with one mission so that we can make it a success. We should gauge our village and see how far we are with the Vision 2016 pillars. That is another way of preparing for the independence celebration because the two will be celebrated on the day,” said Kgakge.

She emphasised that the community should not pile all the work on the Dikgosi by not coming when called for meetings. She said they (Dikgosi) cannot do the job alone without the help of the community.  She added that the villagers are the only people who can turn their village into what they want it to be. The chairperson of the Umbrella Village Development Community (UVDC), Kelatlhegile Gontse, said last year the people of Palapye were reluctant to help during the preparations for the independence celebrations. He said they were forced to do everything on their own hence struggled. So he called on the community to take part in this year’s preparations.

He said when people were questioned about why they were being reluctant, the feedback was that most people wanted to celebrate at their wards.

Maforaga said the reason why Palapye is always lagging behind is because there is a lot of jealousy. He said people who never attend meetings are the ones who are good at complaining, criticising others and they only attend Kgotla meetings when they have something to argue about.

Another meeting was suggested for March 30 and Maforaga ordered all the wards to submit two names of their representatives to the Kgotla at the meeting. He said they also encouraged people to volunteer. The VDC will however still be the overseer of all the projects.