16 Mar 2015

The Minister of  Defence, Justice and Security, Mr Shaw Kgathi, has asked Parliament to approve his ministry budget totaling over P6 billion for the 2015/16 financial year.

Presenting the budget proposals, Minister Kgathi said of the total amount, P5, 03 billion was for the recurrent budget while P1, 3 billion was for development.

Mr Kgathi said an increase of 142 per cent for the ministry headquarters allocation is attributable to completion and maintenance of border patrol routes, expansion of cabling and networking for the Dukwi Refugee camp, development and management of refugee database, decentralisation of maintenance of vehicles from the Ministry of Transport and Communications and decentralisation of building maintenance from the Ministry of Infrastructure, Science and Technology.

Mr Kgathi said the maintenance budget which constitute the highest percent of this allocation was to be shared amongst all the departments of the Ministry except the Botswana Defence Force (BDF Headquarters), Attorney Generals Chambers, Directorate of Public Prosecution, Administration of Justice and Prisons Department.

He said the increase of the seven per cent for the Botswana Police Service budget was mainly to cater for increased overtime allowance resulting from the recent pro-rated adjustment which includes senior officers. The budget will also cater for the upgrading of special constables from A3 salary scale to A1 as well as postal and service charges in 2015/16.

Mr Kgathi requested over P1billion development budget for the BDF. He said out of the amount requested over P200 million or 18.2 per cent was for building projects mainly for ongoing projects and maintenance of existing infrastructure. The remaining 81.8 per cent will cover aircraft, vehicles, communications and defence equipment projects.

The minister requested an amount of P149million for the Botswana Police Service development activities which will cover police facilities projects to fund construction of staff houses, construction of police posts and payment of final accounts for the completed Mahalapye and Palapye police stations.

An additional P45 million will fund the upgrading of Smart zone system, Global Surveillance and Monitoring cellular system and introduction of Incident Management System.
Of the P32 million requested for Department of Prisons and rehabilitation P10 million will fund prison computerisation while the remaining P22 million will cover prisons facilities. ENDS