New district hospital planned for Francistown
Chakalisa Dube | Thursday February 23, 2017 17:48
On Monday, the first day of the weeklong ordinary full council meeting, Muzila said that plans are underway to make good on the promise to deliver on the residents’ wish list.
The construction of the hospital will be part of the Urban Development Plan (UDP) 4. which is part of the National Development Plan (NDP) 11. It will be carried out over a six-year period from the 2017-2018 financial year.
“The construction of the new Francistown district hospital and psychiatric department is anticipated to start during the 2019-2020 financial year,” Muzila said in her address.
The Mayor said that much detail about the district hospital project would be availed in due course.
For many years there have been growing calls from city leaders and residents that there should be a new district hospital because the city’s referral hospital, Nyangabgwe, cannot cope with the high number of patients it receives. Nyangabgwe mainly services residents of greater Francistown.
There are also impressions that the equipment used at the hospital is ageing, meaning that the facility cannot meet modern demands of the health sector.
Nyangabgwe, which began operation in 1989, has often referred some patients who need modern as well as specialised services to areas such as Serowe and Mahalapye, which authorities have described as costly.
Early last year, the Minister of Health and Wellness Dorcus Makgato tentatively told a full council meeting in Francistown that the construction of the district hospital has been included in NDP 11, but she was then not sure it will be approved. The project to construct the district hospital was also shelved in NDP 10 due to financial constraints.
Other projects planned for UDP 4 are the construction of the Tatitown Customary Court type II, the roofing of the Francistown Sports Complex among others. There is also the Aerodrome-Gerald road link, which is planned to start during the 2017-2018 financial year.
“I regret that some of the projects that we expected to see included in our UDP4 have not been approved. This is not enough looking at the fact that this is the second city in the country and that some of the unapproved projects were the priority of the community,” Muzila said without elaborating though she could have been referring to the above-mentioned three projects.