28 Jun 2016

For many years, many did not consider brigades as places one could proceed to for further studies.

These institutions, although created to offer different practical courses from bookkeeping to secretarial studies, saw many shun them.

They were seen as places for those who did not perform well academically at Junior Certificate (JC).

Despite numerous success stories from these institutions, many remained adamant not wanting anything to do with them.

Established around 1965, the brigades were work crews initiated by communities in response to the unemployment of primary school leavers who could not be admitted to secondary education because of poor academic performance.

Over the years, courses were improved to suit modern generations’ needs and changing society with training offered ranging from artisan training through combination of training with production.

The goods and services produced in the production units have been sold to the community and in this way, leading to the development of communities and encouraged small scale entrepreneurship.

To date, there are over 40 brigades nationwide, among which 21 have been taken over by the government and were recently re-branded.

There has been emphasizes from the government through the Ministry of Education and Skills Development for school leavers to also consider brigades instead of only flocking to the universities with limited spaces.

In the case of one Mr Petrus Selokela, a 1996 graduate from the now named Gaborone Technical College (GTC), just a year before the government established the first technical college said upon completing his 12 years of schooling, he opted to do an electrical course at a brigade.

For him, it was all about furthering his education with something of choice and which will later help him to become a well-established businessman.

Today, Mr Selokela is the owner of Taltec Enterprises, a company which is undertaking a project under Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) to build five LA 2 houses under the Public Officers Housing Initiative.   

At the age of 40, he noted in an interview that he had never been formally employed and only registered his company in 2009.

For all the years from 1996 when he graduated, he has been self-employed and even employing other Batswana executing electrical jobs he received.

He stated he only got into construction last year when the talk of ESP projects gained ground and it was then that he added construction to his company profile and fortunately for him, he won the tender to build the five houses in Nata.

The ESP projects were officially launched on the 9th of May this year at Nata and together with another local company, they were given two months to have completed the collective 10 houses.

He has employed 15 workers for the project, with nine of them Nata locals, while the other six are just Batswana from other areas.

Since there is one major hardware in Nata where they can purchase material from and with the demand up as a result of many projects being undertaken in the area, the supplier is not able to cater for all of them and that means the next stop for them is to consider travelling to Francistown, which is about 200 kilometers away.

With limited time frame to complete the projects, Mr Selokela together with his employees have to make comprises to make progress to beat time and the arrangement has been that they claim for every inspected stage that has passed.

Submitting a claim to be paid often takes more than two weeks and he had to negotiate with his employees for them to push the work while waiting for payments to come. Ends