FCC to call Business Pitso

Patricia Edwin
Staff Writer | Tuesday June 4, 2013 00:00

 

He said the council has realised it cannot just depend on the government for development, hence the need to turn to the private sector to help drive the process.If we depend only on the government for the development of Francistown, we will not prevail because the government has even explained that for the rest of the NDP10, there will be no new projects because there are no funds.In the meantime as Francistown City Council (FCC), we need to come up with initiatives that will help grow Francistown,' he explained. 

The mayor said that at the proposed Business Pitso to be held before end of the year, he will propose a number of ideas to the private sector.'The aim is to invite high profile local businesses and propose to them the partnership for the development of Francistown as dependence on the government will not take us anywhere,' he said. He said the council would propose beneficiation to the mining companies surrounding Francistown.

'Instead of them sending their products raw to other countries, we can partner in building beneficiation factories that will be used to process the resources so that we can better the economy of Francistown and also create employment. I strongly believe that Francistown has the capacity to have factories of that nature,' he said.Kgalajwe said the city needs to be re-branded. 'One of the things that we will propose to the business community of Francistown is the issue of re-branding the city because the popular name 'Ghetto' might be confusing to our potential investors as they might think Francistown is slums or 'ghetto' like in other African countries and decide against bringing their business here,' he explained.

He said at the Business Pitso, it will be proposed that the private sector should help accommodate the informal sector in Francistown.'One of the mines had once promised us that they would build a market place that can house the informal sector in town but we are still waiting. We will continue to ask for help from the private sector to help with shelter for our informal sector because that is one of the biggest concerns in this city,' he said.He asserted that the aim is to utilise the twinning agreements to the maximum. 'We have twinning agreement with Belgium who are actively helping us with our youth projects and other projects.

Recently they donated P158,477 which we will use to pay volunteers who work at the youth centre. We also have twinning arrangements with a Chinese city.France is also at the moment proposing twinning from us and these are partnerships that can also help us develop our city without leaning too much on the government,' he said.