11 Apr 2013

Councillors have been encouraged to support cooperatives as they play a significant role in national and local economies.

Addressing Kgalagadi District full council meeting, Assistant Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Keletso Rakhudu said councillors and district leadership had a role to play in supporting cooperatives.

He appealed to councillors to help educate their electorates on the importance of cooperatives while at the same time assisting in the revamping of these societies. He said their benchmarking exercises had shown that cooperatives in countries like Lesotho and Kenya contributed significantly to the countries’ economies.

“It was from these findings that the ministry resolved to catalyse the revamping of the cooperatives. Cooperatives have also been named as one of the initiatives that can help eradicate abject poverty,” he said.

The assistant minister informed the council that his ministry was in the process of amending the 1989 Act, a successor to the 1962 Act that was implemented in 1964. He therefore urged councillors to get themselves copies of the gazette in order to submit their input on the bill via their Member of Parliament.

He said by contributing to the bill, councillors would be adding to their knowledge and would consequently be conversant with the act when approved.

Mr Rakhudu also informed the councillors about the cooperatives transformation strategy, which had 20 key objectives amongst them diversifying cooperatives products and markets and also improving cooperatives competitiveness.

The assistant minister chronicled the genesis of the collapse of cooperatives and said some of the factors that led to the collapse were identified as competition that became harsh with the advent of chain stores.

He explained that when cooperatives grew in size they became complex and sophisticated to the extent that the then management could not cope since they lacked expertise in business management.

To ameliorate such knowledge and expertise gaps, he said government built a cooperatives college where members would be taught such skills as business management, marketing and research inter alia.

For their part, councillors expressed appreciation to the revamping of cooperatives and offered their contribution on how best they could be run.

Councillor for Bokspits/Struizendam, Mr Frederik Titus advised that cooperatives should seek alternative markets than to compete with retail stores.

He opined that despite the competition, some members of the cooperatives lacked commitment.

Mr Milton Moseru appealed to government to protect cooperatives against chain stores which stifled Batswana businesses. ENDS