10 Dec 2014

The newly elected North West District council (NWDC) chairman, Mr Reaoboka Mbulawa has urged fellow councillors to always put the community at the centre of development.

He said members of the community should be the drivers of transformation and not mere beneficiaries. Mr Mbulawa was sharing his vision during the opening of the full council meeting on December 8.

He said it was important to keep the community informed about new developments and explain the benefits that would be derived from them.


He stated that in the State-of-the-Nation Address, President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama gave a lot of hope to the nation as he signaled positive economic growth and its recovery from the previous challenges of world economic recession. 


He also said the President highlighted the government’s commitment to “promoting local governance, while taking services closer to the people” through the operation of service centers, which were established last year as well as through piloting a “Service Halls concept as part of the e-Government programme as a one stop shop for various public services.


Mr Mbulawa also said he intented to guide the council to develop a target specific plan through Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and other modern models of procurement which would in turn solidify council’s income generating sources. 


He noted that realisation of that would provide sustainable income that would allow the council to operate smoothly and serve people without failure.

The chairman also intends to achieve the aspiration of Maun as a modern, face lifted Agro-Tourism Hub which would offer jobs and boost socio-economic benefits to Ngamiland as a whole. 


He said that would only be achieved only if both the tourism and the agricultural sectors were equally given special attention. 


On other issues, he informed the councillors that the twinning programme with Hultsfreds Municipality was progressing well noting that on 20th and 21st November 2014, both the project and lead teams left for Stockholm, Sweden with three issues at hand. The area for cooperation is Local Economic Development (LED); poverty alleviation through capacity building in the informal sector of the North West District.


He said the first issue was to evaluate the current area of cooperation and if possible request for six months extension in order to wrap up as the arrangement was coming to an end after the agreed three years. Mr Mbulawa said the evaluation report from both councils indicated a job well done as the intended milestones had been achieved. 
The second issue was to propose a new partnership on waste management.

The chairman said following presentation by NWDC, the two councils welcomed the idea and as such a proposal should be made and sent to the sponsors. The last one was to hold a month long exhibition to show case Ngamiland baskets and allow people to purchase. 


It has been reported that the Swedish community showed great interest in baskets as they bought most of them from the first day of the exhibition. It is expected that by end of the month all the baskets would have been bought. The project team also comprised of two basket weavers from Shorobe and Etsha villages. ENDS