17 Sep 2014

In an effort to efficiently strengthen bilateral cooperation and promotion of local governance, Botswana Local Authorities Association (BALA) organized a conference with two district councils from Uganda to consider the possibilities of twinning.

This has resulted in the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between North West District Council (NWDC) and the two councils from Uganda namely; Kabarole and Gulu District Local Governments.

This was revealed by the council chairman, Mr Lathang Molonda when briefing the council about the twinning progress. 

He said a team of two officers being the chairman and senior assistant council secretary left for Uganda on August 1 at the invitation of Uganda Local Government Association with a view to cement the partnership.

The agreement between the two Ugandian councils and NWDC covered six areas of cooperation which are agriculture, tourism, waste management, informal business sector development, capacity development and local economic development.

However, recently NWDC started a twinning program with the Hultsfred Municipality from Sweden and Mr Molonda pointed out that the program is successful and continues to serve its intended purpose.

The main area of cooperation is local economic development; poverty alleviation through capacity building in the informal sector of the North West district.

On other issues, Mr Molonda told the house that since inception of poverty eradication programme, a total of 139 projects have been funded. Out of these projects, he said 27 are success stories and they have made an income ranging from P8000 to P152 341.00.

He said although the project started at a snail pace due to various implementation challenges such as lack of suppliers, lack of operational space, procurement process, limited training institutions and indecisiveness of project selection by beneficiaries.

“I can assure you that though some of the challenges are still there, we are committed to ensuring that backlog projects are funded by December 2014”he added.

The council has received funds amounting to over P3 million for poverty eradication projects to be used for 2014/15 financial year. The funds have been shared equally among two sub districts with each receiving P1.6 million.

The council chairman also announced that poverty eradication beneficiary from Somelo participated in the just ended Botswana Consumer Fair and was given Chairman’s award. ENDS