Hotel for Seronga, Herbarian for Eretsha
Okavango Community Trust (OCT) has handed over construction sites for its two major 2023 developments, a 22-bed hotel in Seronga and a cultural village in Eretsha.
The first phase of the twin projects, expected to be completed in the next eight months, will see the Trust part with over P5 million.
From the money, P4, 183, 283.66 has been set aside for the construction of 11 chalets at the hotel, while P1, 067, 733.99 will go towards paying for the cultural village’s Herbarian – where tourists and locals can learn about the different herbs found in the area.
For OCT Manager, Botshelo Mosinyi, the scale of both projects are a source of great pride.
“These are big projects and we have to do them in phases because they require large sums of money. So on February 4th we handed over the sites to the contractors and we have also engaged supervising consultants to ensure that we get the best from our investment,” he told Voice Money.
To ensure the initiative’s success, OCT appointed four consultants: one responsible for physical planning and quantity surveying, the other for structural engineering and another for architecture.
The Trust announced its plans to build these projects last year as a way of broadening income generators in the area and ultimately developing and improving the lives of communities within OCT land concession.
“Our duty as a trust is to ensure that the lives of people within our concession are comfortable and that they get at least the very basic needs,” explained Mosinyi.
OCT covers five villages: Seronga, Eretsha, Gunotsoga, Beetsha and Gudigwa.
These communities benefit from monies they get through leasing out land in the Okavango Delta to big travel and tourism companies such as Wilderness Safaris and further getting jobs and skills from these companies.
“That is the whole point because our communities are in wildlife area and an arrangement has been done with government to allow us to use natural resources to benefit us and in turn conserve and take care of these resources. We use the income to supplement where the government is otherwise not able,” Mosinyi highlighted.