19 Nov 2014

Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) leader, and also Leader of Opposition, Mr Duma Boko says there is need to identify areas where job creation is possible.

Responding to the State-Of-the-Nation Address in Parliament on November 18, Mr Boko said President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama, in his recent speech to the nation, did not state how he was going to create jobs in the next three years.

As a result, he said the UDC’s economic agenda pointed to employment opportunities in sustainable agriculture and food processing, entertainment, leisure, sport and tourism, services , niche sub sectors within services such as health, education, logistics/transportation and business services, business process outsources, information and communications technology, pharmaceuticals and medicines, mining and mineral processing and sustainable energy and water.

To further unleash the full potential of the economy, he said the UDC would invest substantial resources in modernising public infrastructure in a comprehensive and systematic way.

“This is what we call ‘The Sky-is-the-limit infrastructure plan.’ Some of the challenges of our inadequate infrastructure include non-existent water drainage systems to capture and conserve water resulting in our water capacity being far below the demand for both industrial and domestic consumption, especially in Gaborone, southern and western parts of the country,” he said.

He added that Internet access was still low and slow where available and at a high cost. He also argued that the national electricity generating capacity was far below Batswana’s needs while the standards of roads, public physical structures and broad band capacity were also low.

Mr Boko also indicated that under the Botswana Democratic Party government, per capita expenditure on infrastructure was the largest in Sub Saharan Africa. “But because of inefficiencies and corruption this expediture has never created sustainable jobs in Botswana,” he said.

He further said that Botswana faced a serious problem of youth unemployment estimated at 50 per cent of the total unemployment. 

“A phenomenon known as the youth bulge has caught up with us. Properly handled the youth bulge can become a demographic dividend, meaning the size of its potential labour force is twice that of the dependent population (children and the elderly) presenting an opportunity if decent jobs are generated for this youthful and highly productive workforce,” he said.

Therefore, he said it was important to create employment and opportunities for the youth to avoid the youth bulge turning into the demographic bomb .

Again, he said it was critical to link government procurement with skills development for the youth thus encouraging companies to offer apprenticeships to them and revamp their training programmes. ENDS