19 Dec 2016

The Minister of Employment, Labour, Productivity and Skills Development, Mr Tshenolo Mabeo, says low productivity and poor work ethic has been raised as one of the contributing factors in Botswana’s low competitiveness rankings.

When giving a keynote address at the signing ceremony of shareholder compact with Botswana National Productivity Centre (BNPC), Mr Mabeo said the centre was a parastatal established to address issues surrounding productivity and work ethic across the different sectors of the economy.

He highlighted that guidelines were developed because government noted some challenges in the operations of parastatals and the identified challenges, among others, where poor resource management, maladministration and inadequate coordination in the delivery process.

“Through the shareholder that we shall be signing today, we hope to address not only the challenges but also to create a culture of responsibility, transparency and responsiveness that we can all pride ourselves with,” he said.

He stated that the shareholder compact is expected to maximise their core principles of accountability, transparency and compliance and not to micromanage their institutions or to stifle them in anyway.

“I must emphasise that the oversight role extends beyond the usual performance monitoring and it also ensures that the strategic intent of the ministry and its parastatals are aligned,” he said

He further said the objective of shareholder compact signing was to institutionalise a set of consistent practices whereby ministries could exercise effective oversight over parastatals across the whole government, as well as to monitor and evaluate their performance.

Minister Mabeo advised the ministry and Botswana National Productivity Center to work as a team and deliver as expected.

For his part vice chairperson of BNPC Mr Norman Moleele, said they achieved a milestone by signing shareholder compact with the ministry. He promised that BNPC will deliver its mandate and they will partner with other stakeholders to improve productivity. ENDS