- – High-tech facility left inactive while district fails to unlock economic potential
- – President Boko says Maun’s massive vocational training capacity remains untapped
- – ‘Maun is disempowering young people who have skills and the zeal to work’
President Duma Boko has called on North West District leaders to help unlock the immense economic potential of the Maun Technical Centre, framing its current underutilisation not as a point of conflict, but as a collaborative opportunity to empower skilled local youth.
Addressing the Mayors and Council Chairpersons’ Forum in Selebi-Phikwe on Tuesday, Boko engaged local authorities in a constructive dialogue, urging them to shift from merely identifying structural deficiencies to actively co-crafting strategic solutions that maximize the district’s world-class assets.
He highlighted that Maun is one of the key areas where a world-class vocational education and training facility continues to sit idle, blaming the district leadership for allowing such an immense economic opportunity to go completely untapped.
According to Boko, international experts have revealed that Maun houses one of the most sophisticated vocational training centres in the country, and most likely in the entire southern African region.
“They said in their own country, which is more advanced economically, they don’t have the kind of equipment which is there in Maun,” he emphasised.
The President revealed that these experts indicated that the entire economy of Maun lies within and must be powered by maximizing the output of that very centre.
“What have we done with that place? Nothing. What is happening to the sophisticated equipment there? Some of it is not even connected to electricity; it is not working,” Boko criticised.
Boko stressed that with this advanced equipment left idling, the problem is not that the district lacks resources, but that leadership fails to use what it already has either effectively or at all. He complained that leaving the facility underutilised actively disempowers young people who have skills and the zeal to work.
“They said, you have got the best seamstresses and designers doing nothing but twiddling their thumbs,” adding that, “there you can have these kids graduating from the school and forming youth start-up companies. Why are we not doing it?”
However, Boko clarified that he was not using Maun’s underutilised facility solely to criticise, but to illustrate the huge wasted potential that is likely available in other districts as well.
He highlighted that another council has rejected a deal from a group of local mechanics who proved they could provide services to it at a low cost. “But instead, the council opted to continue using its expensive regular dealers.”
Meanwhile, Boko has called on council chairpersons and mayors to self-evaluate, noting that their mandate as leaders is not to describe and glorify problems but to come up with strategies that bring solutions.
“We have to look at these inherited deficiencies and structural problems, appreciate and understand them intimately. This is because we have to craft a strategy that must take into account where we are and deliver us to where we ought to be,” he advised.
He further reminded the council leadership that the episode of convulsive political transformation is compressed in time and concentrated on targets.
“We proceed to where we ought to be in incremental steps; we look at what is immediately possible and we move there, and then to the next. Not the grand gesture of some single event, but an accumulation of small acts of courage coming together, aggregating to create a spectacular outcome,” added the President.
