The Selebi Phikwe Town Council (SPTC) has resolved to intensify its efforts to seek private partners to carry some of its development projects, town mayor Molosiwa Molosiwa has said.
In an interview this week, Molosiwa told Sunday Standard that if successful, the implementation of the targeted projects will results in creation of jobs for Phikwe dwellers who were left jobless following the closure of the BCL Mine in October 2016.
Despite government’s attempt to sell it, by July 2017, the BCL mine had no offers except from an entity called Emirates Investment Holdings (EIH) and another Dubai based company seeking to re-process the BCL slag dump to recover metal values.
Minister of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security Sadique Kebonang previously said that should the mine find no suitable candidate by December 2017, the mine will come to a final liquidation.
Molosiwa said this week that after the mine closed the leadership of Selebi Phikwe Council sat down and decided that one of the ways it can help alleviate the problem of unemployment in the town was through Private Public Partnerships (PPPs).
“One of those ideas was to look for private partners to develop plots of land that we have around the town with them”, he said.
Molosiwa revealed that so far SPTC has found an unnamed partner who will be developing a golf course in the town to a standard that will hopefully attract more golf players to the town and create jobs for locals
Besides the golf course he said that they also have other plots like one at Makhubu that they are looking for partners to help develop and in the end create employment for people in the town.
“Our aim is even to go outside the country to look for partners to come and partner with us so as to help the situation “he said.
Molosiwa denied that the town has ceased operating and was quickly turning into a ghost town saying that this cannot be true as there are some construction projects taking place at the moment in the town. “We are constructing more classes in some schools, teacher’s houses so it cannot be true that the town is turning into a ghost town”.
