Moroka wants constituency fund owned by community

Lindiwe Mozola | Friday February 10, 2017 11:50

Moroka was speaking at the Palapye Administrative Authority (PAA) stakeholders’ consultative forum for the programme recently. LG 1109 has been in place since 1978 to support and strengthen communities to engage in income generating projects and to create sustainable job opportunities. However, due to the economic meltdown, it was suspended during the NDP10 and has now been re-introduced in NDP11. The programme has been allocated funds amounting to P570 million thus P10 million per constituency.

Through the fund, communities will come with projects that will create employment and uplift each constituency status. Kgosi Moroka said to avoid conflicts of interest, members of the community should come up with ideas so that everyone benefits. He is against the idea of VDC and political leaders being the driving force behind the programme, which might tarnish the Government’s good intentions.

“Proposals should be innitiated by local communities and VDC should not look at their projects and implement them nor should the ideas be influenced by political leadership. This is Government’s efforts to uplift the livelihoods of its people if the community does not own the project it will just fail like many other empowerment projects that came before,” he said.

He also showed displeasure towards lack of consultation with dikgosi, saying dikgosi are never consulted on anything just like with the programme. He said there are things that they would have preferred to discuss privately rather than hearing about them just like any other ordinary person.

Moroka also appealed that the programme guidelines be set so that they can have a better understanding of how it is going to be run as well as monitoring.

Councillor for Morupule ward Jordan Makhura said that just like tribal leaders, they are also important. He said they prefer to be consulted first before any decision can be made because most of the times they are the ones who have to explain to the community. He was worried that if they awee not consulted, tenders will be awarded unfairly just like all the time making rich people richer forgetting the purpose of LG 1109.

Makhura also said Palapye constituency have already met and agreed that the biggest problem they want addressed through the funds is upgrading of roads, which become impassable during rainy seasons, making it difficult for cars to use them. “We agreed as Palapye residents during the consultative meeting with our Member of Parliament Master Goya,” he said. Some VDC members are of the view that funds should be divided among the wards in a constituency.