17 Feb 2015

Member of Parliament for Chobe, Mr Ronald Shamukuni has advised his constituents to be receptive to job seekers from other districts, in light of the recruitment exercise that has just started for the Kazungula Bridge project.

This followed brewing tension between Chobe residents and job seekers originating from elsewhere in Botswana as hiring for some components of the project got underway.

In an interview after a kgotla meeting in Kazungula recently, Mr Shamukuni said he informed his constituents that he did not want to see them sidelined in other projects around the country, if they continued to claim that the project was theirs and they must be given priority over others during the hiring process.

He informed them that the majority of unskilled and semi-skilled labour would be reserved for Chobe residents. “However, this is not to say that people from other districts will not be considered,” he noted. The MP said he advised Chobe people that the project must not separate them but bring them together.

“We have also resolved to use the labour office for all recruitment to ensure transparency and proper coordination,” he noted.   The recruitment done so far represented a small component of the bridge, the larger chunk of the project has not started yet, he said.  

He said there were many other major projects coming to Chobe such as the Zambezi Integrated Agro Commercial project which would draw water from the Chobe River to irrigate Pandamatenga farms.

Such projects, he said would absorb not only Chobe residents but Batswana as a whole. ENDS