Lobatse streets naming underway
Tumelo Mouwane | Thursday September 7, 2017 13:20
In an interview on the sidelines of a consultation meeting recently, he said the names were suggested during a series of Kgotla meetings on the basis of their relevance to the history of the town.
Mogotetsi said names were weighed on the basis of the impact of their bearers in the community and the council is yet to re-consult the community before a final decision is made. “Most of the names are a reflection of the town’s history as one might be aware that Lobatse is a very historically rich town,” he said. He said the names had gone through a verification process and were selected on the basis of their relevance to their suggested location as well as the role their owners played within the community in the past or at present.
“In some circumstances we found that some streets had two names which were already plucked. In those circumstances we had to do away with the other name. Names are already mapped,” Mogotetsi said. The officer further said the project was a partnership between the members of the community and the council.
“This was not a project undertaken by the council alone, but a project for the people by the people. People had to be thoroughly engaged in order to avoid some situations we have seen in some towns in the country where it looked like people did not take part in the initiative because they rejected the names,” he said. According to Mogotetsi, the street naming project is aligned to the new international location address system to improve service provision in areas such as emergency services and mail delivery.
The new system is already being piloted in some parts of the country such as Gaborone. “The new system is quite results orientated, service provision will be much more effective especially for emergency services. An ambulance would take the whole time to arrive at the area of an incident because street and plot identification was a challenge,” Mogotetsi said.