However one looks at it, Gaborone City Council seems to be overwhelmed.
While Delivery is now the in thing, vogue if you may, it would seem like the word is still to find its way into the City Council’s lexicon.
In many ways, the situation with regard to public service delivery seems to be getting worse by the day.
Refuse collection is a problem.
The state of the City’s roads is a filthy sore.
Bodies of dead bodies are all over the place. And the number of traffic lights that are out of order for weeks on end is growing.
For many people in the city, a trip from home to work or the other way is not only a risk journey but a tedious one that literally requires bouts and bouts of energy, tolerance and perseverance.
As city dwellers we should not allow ourselves to get used to a degenerate state of affairs where the municipality simply neglects what duties it is supposed to carry out.
We should strive for the best. And there are many reasons why.
Politics aside, for Botswana Gaborone City is the centre of power.
All the important visitors who we lobby at great cost to come and invest in Botswana come to Gaborone.
If we cannot take care of Gaborone it is inevitable that such visitors depart this country having their opinion of it based on what situation they found obtaining in the capital city.
It is obvious that while out of self interest we have to go an extra mile to keep the City above the standard bars with regard to public hygiene, road safety and the related amenities like, it also is a national duty for so much depends on the perception that international visitors immediately form upon reaching Gaborone.
There is no doubt that the economy has been losing grip, but that can not be an excuse by the Council to leave dead dogs to rot all over the city.
In some instances, rotten bodies of dead dogs have been spotted a few metres away from the City Centre where the municipality headquarters is based.
That cannot be good for the City Clerk, who is the Administrative Head of the Council.
It also does not augur well for the personal image of the City Mayor who likes to carry herself around as the political figurehead of the City.
A failure by the City Council to collect refuse regularly has meant that household waste bins are for most of the time not only full but also radiating a kind of stench that has effectively rendered many houses uninhabitable.
As can be expected, the situation gets worse during a rainy season as has been the case for Gaborone in the last few days.
With regards to the state of the roads, we have in the past complained about the shoddy workmanship of many of the contractors favoured by the City Council to maintain roads that fall under the ambit of the Council.
Every time it rains, the amateurish nature of such contractors is exposed bare for all to see as the roads all of a sudden develop craters that make it terribly unsafe to drive around the City.
Then there are the traffic lights. Not only are they an inconvenience they have also become a real menace.
While traffic lights are designed to facilitate the smooth flow of traffic, in Gaborone, because they are for most of the time not working, traffic lights are a cause of traffic jams which invariably leads to accidents and a loss of lives and property that could very easily be avoided.
We hope the Ministry of Local Government who are supposed to be political masters of the municipality will do something to rescue the officials at the council who, it would seem, are clearly drowning in confusion.
