09 Feb 2016

The government has many good policies and programmes in place and these have been harnessed to ensure that national development takes place, improving the living conditions of Batswana.

These were the sentiments of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dr Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi when contributing to the debate on the national budget in Parliament on Monday.

But Dr Venson-Moitoi cautioned that while the government had come up with many sound policies, circumstances do not always allow them to be implemented to the fullest.

“We have worked on making our country a centre for diamond beneficiation, but the process has not been smooth sailing. It became apparent at a recent international conference in Namibia that some of the world’s biggest diamond mining companies would prefer to conduct beneficiation in Europe rather than Southern Africa, and these are some of the challenges regional governments have to face,” she said.

The Serowe South MP further added that the country has been a pioneer in terms of ensuring accessibility to the Internet.  She said as early as 2003, the government had been working on providing Kitsong Centres countrywide, providing fibre optic cables in order to create WI-FI hot spots in rural areas and improving access to the Internet across the country.

On education, Dr Venson-Moitoi said the government was considering the needs of different learners.

“We have policies in place to ensure that those learners who struggle will get to repeat their primary school classes. But this process needs more classrooms and more teachers, and implementation will need this infrastructure in place. 

When we have these resources in place, our education will cater for the needs of learners from pre-school, and as they go through the school system, their different skills will be catered for, be they vocational, the arts or academic,” she said.

She also added that as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, she uses her interaction with the international community to seek investors who could improve the country’s economy.

Meanwhile, Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Mr Fidelis Molao said he was baffled by opposition MPs’ criticism of the defence spending since in earlier parliamentary debates they had called for the government to improve the Botswana Defence Force (BDF). Mr Molao said through the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), the government would construct classrooms, teachers’ quarters as well as roads which would benefit communities across the country.

“We often hear criticism that through the construction of roads we are not creating permanent and lasting jobs. But what the critics do not consider is the long-term economic benefits these roads will have. 

They will boost business in some parts of the country, granting access to markets, creating opportunities for enterprising people and the broader community,” the Tonota North MP said. Ends