The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Peter Siele has urged district councils around the country to emulate Southern District Council and venture into joint venture with the private sector under public, private partnership in a bid to create jobs and provide services to the community.
Siele made the call during the official opening of the P60 million shopping mall in Kanye, partnership between Southern District Council and Time Projects.
“SDC has built the biggest project under PPP and it is our government’s hope that other Councils in the country will follow suit and go into partnership with private sector to generate revenue and create employment for their communities,” he said.
He added that the development besides creating revenue to help the Council carry out its mandate of providing services to the people of Southern District Council will help in bringing services to the people which they currently have to go out of Kanye to access.
“We now have a wider choice of goods. If one wants to buy from Spar, and not the other shop well we now have Spar in Kanye, he can buy from it and save costs of going to Gaborone,” he said.
Siele said that government in 2012 came up with the directive that Councils around the country should venture into PPP to make revenue for themselves as the government was not able to meet all their financial requirements.
The Southern District Council Chairman, Leach Tlhomelang also praised his council for the good initiative which he says other councils in the country should emulate and create revenue and employment opportunities.
Time projects he explained was chosen for partnership after evaluation of three companies that have applied for partnership with the Council.
“We did everything in openness. We advertised for partnership companies applied and in the end after proper evaluation we felt that we could partner with Time Projects,” he said.
However there were also dissenting voices from hawkers. Their concern is that they are not allowed to sell food in the small tuck shops they are renting from the project though they are expected to pay P250, 00 for them.
“We do not know how we are expected to pay monthly rent of P250, 00 when we are not allowed to sell food in our tuck shops,” said a young hawker who declined to be named.
