Public Works at the handover and official opening of Setlagole Clinic
12 September 2006
Programme Director
My colleague MEC for Health, Honourable Nomonde Rasmeni
The Executive Mayor of Ratlou Local Municipality, Honourable Cllr P Setlhogo
Motlotlegi Kgosi
Honourable Councillors
Senior Government officials
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
I am honoured to be in Setlagole and to be part of the celebration of yet
another government delivery milestone. Today we celebrate the fruits of our
liberation, the fruits of our age of hope and endless possibilities.
Indeed a lot has changed since the days of the apartheid regime whose
unequal and fragmented health services could not meet the needs of the entire
nation, with most rural parts of the country without health facilities.
Setlagole was one of those rural areas neglected by the past government.
It is a matter of record that this government inherited an infrastructure
system fraught with inequalities and disparities. It is against this backdrop
that after 1994 the people's government, your government gave priority to the
improvement and development of quality infrastructure for the benefit of the
historically disadvantaged communities in our country.
This was because of the poor state of our facilities and we needed to
upgrade this in line with our service delivery objectives based on
accessibility, affordability, equity and sustainability.
It therefore gives me great pleasure to be here today for the official
handover of this clinic to MEC Rasmeni. This handover marks yet another
delivery milestone by government through my department and our client
department, the Department of Health. It is also an occasion to celebrate the
partnership between government and the community of Setlagole.
Today also marks an important day in the history of our clinic building
delivery programme, not only in Setlagole village but also throughout the
province. People in the vicinity of Setlagole are the luckiest amongst others
in the rural villages in the North West province. When we look around the
village we all notice that people are busy. As I go around in the province
during the handing over and visit to projects, I always say to the people that
when you see people in construction, you must know that there is
development.
The physical infrastructure in this village is very beautiful and of quality
and this tells us that people are not relaxed, they are working very hard to
achieve their own goals and betterment of the lives of our people.
I hope that you will all agree with me when I say that the achievement of
these projects is through the partnership and co-operation of people of
Setlagole, the chieftaincy and the provincial government. There is therefore no
doubt whatsoever that Motlotlegi Kgosi Phoi and his council are in the same
league of those traditional leaders who vowed never to betray their people.
Motlotlegi Kgosi Phoi you remind of one of the greatest African leaders of our
struggle for freedom who also decided not to betray his people, Kgosi Albert
Luthuli.
Instead of betraying his people, Kgosi Luthuli chose persecution and was
deposed as a traditional leader by a regime that despised everything African
and democratic. In doing so he taught us the lesson that real leaders must be
ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.
Ladies and gentlemen, it was under the leadership of Kgosi Luthuli that the
masses of our people entered the fighting fifties with the Defiance campaign,
the struggle against Bantu education, the Freedom Charter, the drawing together
of all freedom loving South Africans across the racial line into the Congress
Alliance, the anti-pass campaign by women in 1956, the heightened political
ferment in both rural and urban areas and the launch of armed struggle in
1961.
We are happy to have such calibre of leaders who are not egocentric. As
government we salute all our traditional leaders who have the interests of
their subjects at heart. We value their partnership as agents for change and
development as we know that they have a pivotal role to play in nation building
and in development.
We wish that all our traditional leaders could portray the spirit of
Luthuli, James Moroka, King Shaka and Nkosi Bhambata by putting interests of
their subjects first. The delivery of quality infrastructure to our people like
this clinic is one of the cornerstones of the people's contract that the
ANC-led government has entered with the masses of our people.
Honoured guests, the building of this clinic was not by mistake it was a
necessity that could not be avoided. We come from an era where we saw our
mothers, sisters and wives giving birth under trees and in bushes while trying
to rush to the nearest clinic, which could be more than 20 kilometres away. It
is time to restore their dignity and pride by providing them with basic
infrastructures of which this facility is one of them.
Acting on the mandate of the Department of Health, this facility was build
at a cost of over R5,5 million. It consists of two maternity rooms, two staff
houses, patients consulting rooms and a dispensary room/pharmacy. During the
construction of this clinic, local empowerment and employment was created
through 21 job opportunities for locals throughout the 11 months of the
construction period.
I wish to congratulate the woman contractor, Christine Williams of Mapule
Construction and her team for quality work done in this project. We appreciate
your commitment and determination to make it in the male and white dominated
construction industry. The performance of women contractors like you gives us
every reason to consider increasing our allocation of contracts to women
contractors to 30%.
In the last financial year we allocated R95,1 million to 34 women
contractors and we are proud that of the quality of work they have delivered.
Our appeal to aspirant women contractors is that they must register with the
relevant registration bodies such as the Construction Industry Development
Board to be considered for tender allocation.
As we celebrate today, I would also like to plead with the people of
Setlagole to take care of their clinic and work together and guard against
those who would want to vandalise this structure.
Ke rata go leboga thata Kgosi le dikgosana tsa rona ka go re adima lefatshe
la bona go tsweletsa porojeke eno jaaka e tlile go tlhabolola matshelo a batho
ba rona. A re tsweleleng go dirisana le mafapha a puso go tlisa ditirelo kwa
baaging.
In conclusion, it is my honour to hand over keys for the facility to my
colleague the honourable MEC for Health, Mme N R Rasmeni to officially open the
clinic.
Ke a leboga.
Issued by: Department of Public Works, North West Provincial
Government
12 September 2006
