allAfrica.com: Botswana: Let's Rid Botswana of Mediocrity, Poor Service (Page 1 of 1)

Please allow me the space to share some gripes with your readers. What I am concerned of is the poor state of maintenance and upkeep of our Government-built facilities, infrastructure and assets.

I am sure that many readers countrywide will share my sentiments. Let me start with the poor state of our roads both national and those within township boundaries.

Despite having made tremendous strides in constructing paved roads countrywide, travelling on them today has become a major hazard because of the poor state of those roads as a result of poor planning, little or no maintenance by the authorities concerned.

It is evident that over the past few months, we have seen a noticeable deterioration in the state of our roads, ah yes we did have rains this season but so have we in the past years. One could be excused for thinking that we were living in the old Bechuanaland Protectorate when driving was hazardous enough because we did not have tarred roads but drove on gravel roads so we anticipated the inevitable potholes and corrugation.

In every village, town and city there are potholed roads that contribute to injury and possible loss of life, do serious damage to vehicles, cause accidents, and reduce traffic to a snail's pace.

Our national roads are not much better, travel on any national highway and you are bound to hit a few surprise potholes. Some have been there for many years despite regular temporary repairs, in some cases it seems that the roads department has given up fixing them because they have even resorted to putting up permanent road signs warning of the existence of these potholes.

Have you recently travelled the road to Kasane from just north of Nata? This road is a disgrace, it has been deteriorating over the past three years and today it has become a death trap because of its poor state.

On a recent trip there were nine damaged vehicles on that road including two overturned ones, all these as a result of the poor condition of the road!

Remember this is our national road /main supply line to Zambia and the north and also the main link to our national tourist attraction, the Chobe district! I am aware that the 'tender' has gone out for this road but did it have to take three years and what happens in the meantime while it takes another three years to effect repairs?

What about our street lights? Every town and city has this problem of their streetlights not working some for long periods of time. Even when you report them to the authorities, nothing seems to be done about them. Our traffic lights at some intersections at the best of times do not work. Before you rush to blame BPC or ESKOM, this has nothing to do with load shedding and the shortage of electricity. The only logical explanation is that someone is sleeping on the job. Our towns are filthy with refuse strewn all over the place, the stench and health risks posed by blocked drains and the resulting sewage overflow. The roads verges are so dangerously overgrown with grass that even a donkey can stand there undetected, road signs have been knocked over and dangling at odd angles. Some of these signs are so old, battered and weather beaten that they serve little or no purpose.

Visit most schools (even institutions of higher learning) and selected Government offices, what will you find? Broken windows, broken or no doors, missing door handles/ locks, filthy windows (those that remain intact), dirty walls and floors, broken furniture lying all over, broken lights and dangerously exposed electrical wires, a poor excuse for what once used to be curtains held together with string, wire, safety pins and so on. and don't even try to venture to the toilets. Many public facilities are suffering the same fate and are beginning to look 'so third world'. Don't we have any pride?

A recent report in the media that a new school will have to be relocated because of cracking walls and foundations adds to the list of woes. I hope that those responsible for the planning, design, engineering, consulting, soil testing, quantity surveying and all the other technical people needed to oversee the project will be held liable and have to answer for it. Or is this as a result of the contractor cutting corners or using sub-standard building materials? Are we just going to accept such shoddy project monitoring and carry on business as usual, surely the axe must fall.

The question is where are all those people who have been employed to oversee or maintain these facilities? Where are the roads, electrical and other engineers and professionals EMPLOYED to do this job? Do they not come out of their air-conditioned offices to tour their areas of responsibility to see what is happening?

It is my sad conclusion that we pay some people 'just to turn up to work' and move papers from one side of the desk to the other. The accounting officers in local or central Government must start cracking the whip. They need to tour the country to see what is happening on the ground and demand results.

I would also like to appeal to our Civic leaders in the Councils (because many of the solutions lay at the door of Local authorities) to focus more on sorting out these problems rather than spending inordinate time debating some inane and obscure motions that some Councillors take pride in tabling; couple this with infighting, position seeking and the obvious point scoring distracts them from what they should be doing as civic leaders.

This time we cannot be fobbed off with some lame excuses, explanations and a list of 'problems' as to why the current state-of-affairs exists. No doubt we will be hearing a lot from the favourite phrase 'lack of implementation capacity', my interpretation for this overused phrase is someone failing to plan ahead or slacking on the job they have been employed and are paid to do.

We have become very good at finding excuses, reasons and blaming others for why something has not been done, but we hear very little about what we should be doing or could have been done. Let's be honest we need more solutions, more action and not more excuses.

Spare us the excuse that there is no money to repair and maintain some of the infrastructure, this is partially true but not as a result of not having funds but the

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