21 Jan 2013

The Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) will not reduce water tariffs, despite the public outcry, according to Member of Parliament for South East South, Mr Odirile Motlhale.

The MP was responding to complaints from some Ramotswa residents during a kgotla meeting on Saturday. They had complained about high water tariffs. He said the corporation had already relayed its intentions of increasing the tariffs, owing to bills they inherited from the department of water affairs when they assumed nationwide water supply.

Furthermore, the legislator told residents that the problem of unattended water leakages was not peculiar to Ramotswa, but was a nationwide outcry. In some areas, he said, some residents had even engaged private companies to attend to the leakages after realising that WUC was not putting any interventions in place despite having received the report.

He said the corporation could take months to respond to calls even though that they had pledged to respond within 24 hours. Mr Motlhale said it was an open secret that since taking over, WUC had not coped with the situation unlike its predecessors.

He said the corporation blamed the situation on the old infrastructures they inherited, but said both the Department of Water Affairs and local authorities were doing better with the same infrastructures.

On other issues, the Mr Motlhale pleaded with parents to assist their children with school work saying the recently released junior certificate results showed that there was a gap between parents and schools authorities.

On other issues, the MP cautioned parents against allowing their children to spend time on social media such as Facebook. He said students spent most of their time on Facebook and as a result neglected their studies.

Meanwhile, the residents also complained of poor service from the village post office. They said the service had been declining over the years. One resident, Mr Richard Molosiwa even suggested that BotswanaPost should increase its staff compliment as well as expandi its current structure.

He said it was disheartening that pensioners would spend the whole day at the post office under unpleasant weather conditions and in some cases they would have to go back home without being assisted. For her part, Kgosi Mosadi complained about the widespread selling of plots in the village especially by the youth.

Kgosi Mosadi said it was unreasonable for government to repossess land from other people and allocate to youth who in turn sold to other people. This, she said, impoverished both the youth and owners of the land.

Hence, she said repossessing of fields and allocation of plots should be done with vigilance to avoid the current situation which was not benefiting anyone, but subjecting fields’ owners to poverty. ENDS