Deputy CDC secretary, Nelson Molepolole, explained that the P3 million tender was treated as an emergency after intervention from the Vice-President who is also Mahalapye West MP. "Long time ago, he (Merafhe) phoned me about the road showing how important it is for the road to be given some preference in construction. I promised him that the road was covered in the Mahalapye drainage master plan. But he felt that it (the master plan) will take too long to implement and as a matter of urgency, we obliged (to repair the road)," he said. Molepolole added that the work was treated as an emergency and that is why procedures were not followed despite the hefty amount involved. "When we have an emergency, we write to the Minister of Local Government to give us a waiver to do selective tendering without following the normal tendering process, and this is exactly what has happened," Molepolole explained. The intervention of the VP has made his rivals to dub the road 'Bulela Ditswe' - the name of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) primaries. The politicians claim the road is being repaired as an emergency to boost the VP's chances of winning the primaries in Mahalapye West. The work involves refilling potholes in the road and improvement of the storm drainage water through a channel to the Mahalapye River. The road runs from the Mahalapye bus/taxi rank to a near-by junction.
Meanwhile, Molepolole denied that they were pushed to repair the road, which has become the talk of the town in Mahalapye. "This project was initiated by the technocrats at the CDC and we duly addressed the councillors about it. Look, the process is such that we invited the contractors on site to view the actual job and then quote. We then took it to the tender committee after some thorough work by all those involved.
