The mayor of Sowa town, George Maphane is happy that his town council has managed to stem the tide of growing criminal activities in the mining town. Addressing a full council meeting last week Maphane said presently there are no cases of major or serious offences recorded over the period under review, except for a few cases of theft in which the culprit was targeting some town houses. He said the perpetrator has since been arrested.
“In another incident, thieves raided the Sowa Town Council offices on the 23 of June 2016 where a few items were stolen. The items included a cable speakers, speaker control with recorder, two laptops and two external drives. Investigations are ongoing and three suspects have been arrested,” he said..
He said under cluster policing, clusters are involved in independence football tournament where the winning cluster will be awarded a present during the upcoming independence celebrations. He said this is done with a view to boost cluster morale and to strengthen partnership between Sowa Community and the police. Regarding student indiscipline in schools, Maphane said, Nxakato Junior Secondary School leadership which has been tormented by lack of discipline from students is holding steadfast in its endeavour to mould and nurture students behaviour to tackle students indiscipline.
“To achieve this the new PTA Executive which got into office in May 2016 has undertaken a series of activities to address students and show them the importance of education and cautioning them on bad behaviour,” he said
The mayor said that they have also engaged one Reverend Magume who is a pastor and community elder who is also instrumental in augmenting what PTA executive is doing by addressing students on Mondays on the same from the biblical point of view. He also said the PTA Executive has also addressed the parents of Sowatown to take keen interest in the learning and teaching of their children so that the school’s results can improve.
“It has further engaged and dialogued with Nxakato staff to cooperate with them in their endeavor to improve school results. The PTA executive has even planned to go to the catchment area of Dzoroga to address students with their parents during the midterm break in September 2016.
Touching on some development projects in Sowa, Maphane said construction of infrastructure in Block 3 SHHA and upgrading of storm water drainage is underway. He however revealed that the project is still at a halt pending the decision to be made between the Public Procurement Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) and the Ministry of Lands and Housing(Department of Technical Services)
“On the 17th of August 2016 a telephonic response from the Ministry was given citing that the project has been awarded and recommendations submitted to PPADB for approval. This is rather disappointing as the matter has been tossed between PPADB and the Ministry of Lands and Housing without progress,” he said.
He said the upgrade of the storm water drainage component will commence when funds are availed by the Ministry. Touching on the Economic Stimulus Programme(ESP), the mayor said the construction of the classroom block at Sowa Primary School is progressing though it experienced some delays due to local labour force not dedicated to work and haulage of G5 material from Nata as they could not get a licensed dealer locally to buy the material.
“The progress stands at 22 percent against the planned 35 percent. The contractor was granted extension of time up to 22nd November 2016 which is the anticipated completion date. The extension of time was prompted by the delay of mobilization advance payment and low number of both skilled and unskilled labour on site,” Maphane added.
He said that the progress for the construction of three bed-roomed staff houses stands at 17 percent against the planned 27 percent. He added that the slabs for both houses are completed and super structure brickwork commenced on the 6th of September, 2016.
Maphane added that the issue of insufficient and unreliable labourers contributed to the delay. To mitigate the challenge he said the contractor sourced labour externally and the completion date for this project is the 21st of October 2016.
