04 Mar 2013

The wellbeing of the human capital is critical to the achievement of national development goals.

Speaking at a mini wellness day in Maun last week, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism (MEWT), Mr Neil Fitt said Implementation of wellness programmes was a worldwide phenomenon because of the realisation to have a supportive and healthy environment to increase productivity and reduce organisational costs.

 

In addition, he said a healthy workforce served as the engine of productivity in any ministry, noting that a healthy, supportive and safe work environment was associated with staff behaviours that ensured reduced absenteeism, high staff morale and increased productivity.

However, he acknowledged that HIV/AIDS and other emerging health problems were a drain on public service productivity.

Mr Fitt said the response to HIV/AIDS should be part of a coordinated response to other issues that affect employee well-being and public sector productivity.

He said factors like stress and sickness resulting in high levels of absenteeism were affecting productivity, service delivery and staff morale.

“Cases are always cited of staff reporting for work, but being sub-optimally productive due to social, emotional, financial, spiritual and  psychological burden to mention a few,” he said.

He encouraged employees to make decisions that improved the quality of their lives, adding that the move would have a trickle down effect on families and positively transforming the social sphere.

Furthermore, he asserted that his ministry was advancing government efforts in sustainable development by exploring all available avenues to transform environmental, wildlife and tourism gains into social capita.

He said that would be done through policy created to protect natural resources for the tourism industry and biodiversity conservation for future use in areas such as rural development, scientific, pharmaceutical and therapeutic advancement.

However, Mr Fitt conceded that his ministry would not have close to where it was today in terms of contribution to sustainable development without paying attention to the people who advance the former’s efforts, hence the need to have the wellness of its workforce as part of its core business.

Meanwhile, Mr Fitt announced that the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) has developed guidelines for mainstreaming employee wellness in the public service in order to strengthen the wellness programme in the ministries.

He urged his ministry’s departments to utilise the resource information available to enhance wellness at the workplace.

The day also saw the ministry launch men sector committees and service excellence values like integrity, team work, commitment and transparency among others.

The acting deputy permanent secretary, corporate services, Ms Thekisego Colledge said service excellence values were aimed at enhancing service delivery in the ministry.

She said they were rolling them out to the districts to ensure they were not only for those in Gaborone, and further revealed that the men sector committee was intended to be a platform that would be used to reach out to men. ENDS