Thamaga is a stand-alone sub district council despite the current arrangement which has paired the village with the township of Mogoditshane to make Mogoditshane/Thamaga Sub district. Following numerous calls to make Thamaga a sub district many years ago that was finally accorded ten years back however due to issues of funding the village was forced to pair with Mogoditshane in order to share the available resources. This was said by Member of Parliament of Thamaga-Kumakwane Palelo Motaosane in an exclusive interview in the sidelines of his strings of Kgotla meetings around the constituency.
“The issue is Thamaga has been long declared a sub district, in fact it is Thamaga, Mogoditshane, Lentsweletau and Molepolole Administrative Authority. But due to financial constraints we could not do them at the same time. At that time we decided to put Thamaga –Mogoditshane and Molepolole-Lentsweletau together. But in a nutshell these villages are sub districts it just that the government was broke at that time. Now the issue is to speed up construction of Thamaga because there was a set target that in a certain period of time both Thamaga and Mogoditshane will go separate ways but still due to financial challenges everything stalled just like you see that even the building for Mogoditshane is yet to be erected. We once tried to build the Mogoditshane one with a Public Private Partnership model but that didn’t bear any fruits however we still considering that idea,” shared Motaosane.
Despite the village been accorded the status of a sub district, residents and the constituents still have to travel long distances to seek services from as far as Gaborone, Mogoditshane, Moshupa and Molepolole. Normally a sub district comes with fully fledged rural administration services such as District Commissioner’s offices and immigration offices where residents can obtain omang, passports and other services. As it stands the Thamaga Service Center only house the district commissioner’s office, social workers and youth offices.
“Now this situation of Mogoditshane and Thamaga being together is a great challenge because Mogoditshane is a very populated village which in turn constrain other villages around it. So we took a decision to declare Mogoditshane a township such that it becomes a stand-alone town like Sowa because in all respect it is in a status of a town therefore at the end the likes of Thamaga end up suffering. Therefore the main aim is that soon Thamaga will break away from Mogoditshane. Some time I always say it does not necessarily have to be buildings, what we need is manpower and all the services provided-infrastructure will come at a later stage .but I can assure you that Thamaga has been declared so it should be priority number and be constructed and get the services,”
Serving a vast area from as far as Mosokotso up to Kumakwane- the constituency headquartered by Thamaga remains challenged when it comes to developments. Most of developments which were earmarked for the past National Development Plans(NDP) have been shelved or died a slow death. Chief amongst those projects which were promised in the past include a senior school, resealing of Molepolole-Thamaga road and the expansion of Thamaga Primary Hospital. All this projects were never delivered as the village remains with dilapidated hospital and police station though servicing a general constituency population of close to 45 000.Since Moshupa Hospital is on the pipeline is not yet known whether Thamaga will get a new hospital anytime soon considering the vicinity of the two villages. Molepolole is also closer to Thamaga and have a multimillion pula built hospital something which might disqualify Thamaga.
“NDP 11 doesn’t have anything solid for Thamaga but there were plans to build a new hospital emergency department and more 13 houses for nurses but only four have been built so far. Secondly it was mostly expansion of primary schools by building additional classrooms which are under construction. Another issue is the sub district matter instead of taking it forward we should take it back such that it is attended to promptly ,”said Motaosane.
The B111 road is in a very bad state with many potholes -something which forced one good Samaritan(Thamaga villager ) to volunteer to patch up the potholes last year .Though in many occasions the Kweneng District Council has tried to patch up the holes, it was all in vain as torrential rains always wash away the patch. Having been built in 1998-2000 it is safe to say the road has reached its life span-normally the life span of tarred roads ranges from 15- 25 years.
“The Thamaga –Molepolole road was supposed to be dealt with in 2018.At that time it was what was called resealing but it happened that one of the constructors was not happy with the way bidding and selections were done. So after the case was dealt with the council took long time to do re-tendering of the project and the way they stalled the value has since increased and even now the road can’t be resealed but needs to be destroyed and construct new one. Hopefully I believe it won’t take long to attend it since it’s on the minister’s desk and its funds are available,” said Motaosane.