Mogoditshane Council Requests Food Parcels For Foreigners

Mogoditshane Sub-District Council has asked the area District Commissioner to assist foreigners with food baskets, as their plight has become dire.

The peri-urban village has 3,149 assessed foreign-resident households and 2,742 have been recommended for food hampers.

Mogoditshane sub council secretary, Daniel Katjinojiwa told The Monitor that the sub council has since written a letter to the District Commissioner requesting consideration for food aid to the affected foreign nationals’ households.

“The District Commissioner will give a report to Foreign Affairs, which will advise us on how the situation could be handled. We identified these foreigners as we were assessing some households in Mogoditshane,” Katjinojiwa said.

“The situation for these foreigners is bad and we hope that they could be assisted. The issue is that some of these people cannot even do piece jobs (in order) to buy food for their children.

And some of them have young children who are under five.”

He said some people do ask for the contacts of foreigners in the interest of aiding those who reside in Mogoditshane with food parcels.

Still in Mogoditshane on issues of COVID19 aid and relief, Katjinojiwa said the total number of households covered for assessment is 60,581.

From this figure, there are 13,426 children under the age of five.

He said the number of households recommended for COVID-19 food basket was 54,232 and seven were given formula milk.

The council secretary said the problem with Mogoditshane was that it has a large population of people who work for small companies and has reasonable rental housing for such workers.

“Most people who work in Gaborone have rented houses here and some households have accommodated 20 or more (people). Again some of these people are making a living selling food and airtime.

We hope that the number will go down because some of them are back to work while the challenge is that they started work late,” he said.

Meanwhile, the council secretary revealed that maintenance of 26 primary school toilets was at an advanced stage, saying progress was at 95%.

“We are also constructing and erecting six-metre high stands, which will hold the 10,000 litre plastic water tank in 10 schools. In primary schools, the projects are progressing well with an average of 45%,” he said.

“Furthermore, we are constructing ninecubicle toilet blocks and N100 conservancy tank in seven schools.

Primary schools, with the exception of one project, which will connect into an existing sewage line, projects are progressing well with an average progress of 55%.”