13 Oct 2024

A quintet of Gaborone Bonnington South candidates on Friday took to the stage in the Radio Botswana parliamentary debates, to woo the electorate to their side.

Even though they differed on most issues, they nonetheless found common ground on the need for basic amenities in the area, such as street lighting, storm water drainage and paving of internal roads.

Past immediate legislator for the constituency, Mr Christian Greeff said low developments in the area compelled him to stand for the last elections.

“For the past 35 years until 2019 while the area was under the opposition, it lagged behind in developments, only for the situation to improve after I came in. Storm water drainage was very poor in areas like Phase 4, Bophirima and Kgale but currently efforts to address such are underway,” he said.

Mr Greeff admitted that lack of illumination contributed to crime, while more internal roads needed paving to augment the current efforts through constituency community projects.

Mr Greeff said lack of employment and drugs abuse among the youth was a concern in the constituency.

He also raised a need to allocate civil plots to churches as most of them were currently operated from residential areas.

Botswana Congress Party representative, Mr Montwedi Muzila said that Batswana continued to be poor in the land of plenty.

“We have to take leaf from similarly resource endowed nations like Dubai. Ours is a problem of poor governance and corruption where most development funds are wasted,” he said.

Mr Muzila said his party would address corruption through separation of powers, to prevent incidences of a president single handedly deciding major national interests.

Mr Muzila said there was need to tailor the education sector to market needs, as well as explore the value chain market more to create employment. Botswana Movement for Democracy hopeful, Mr Thongbotho Morupisi said if elected, his priority for the constituency would be on sustainable community development projects.

This, he said, he would achieve through the formation of a trust. He said that he would also promote participatory governance where the electorate decided its needs.

Botswana Patriotic Front’s Ms Evidence Ronald, the only woman in the race for the constituency, also raised concern about unpaved internal roads, saying that the little done in the constituency was not commensurate with the country’s long years since independence.

“For the 58 years that the BDP has been ruling us, we should have achieved enough at least on basic needs, but we continue to struggle for sufficiency in medicines at health facilities,” she said.

If voted into power, she said, her party would work to close the economic inequality gap between citizens by improving social safety nets.

“We will establish schemes such as a national health insurance, unemployment benefit and child benefit scheme for guardians among others to those deserving,” she said.

For his part,  Umbrella for Democratic Change candidate and  former area legislator, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe said the current high unemployment rate was a result of a collapsed economy, which he said frustrated even the small, medium and micro business sector.

He said that to boost the economy, his party would establish tailored funding for various sectors such as manufacturing, mineral beneficiation, technology and the creative arts.

Mr Gaolathe also talked  about the need to promote home ownership and development of modern infrastructure.

He said that there was poor academic performance because of shortage of teaching material at schools.

Poor drainage system in the constituency, which gets worse during the rainy season Mr Gaolathe said was among those that needed to be attended to. Ends