14 Feb 2017

Member of Parliament for Francistown West, Mr Ignatius Moswaane has called upon the government to set a minimum wage at P3 500 for both public officers and private sector employees.
Debating the 2017/18 National Budget proposals in Parliament on Monday, MP Moswaane said the current P900 was insufficient to enable people to pay for their daily needs. He said he believes the economy was losing as some public officers have adopted a ‘slow down’ phenomenon, saying as such their salaries should be increased.
The MP further said Ipelegeng allowances should also be increased to P900, saying the current amount has been eroded by inflation.
Other people whose salaries should also be increased are the councillors and MPs, he said. The Francistown West legislator also said he was concerned that some private tertiary institutions were cheating government as their graduates do not have necessary skills required by the market.
Mr Moswaane also called upon the government to address the root cause that led to the strike and subsequent closure of the University of Botswana.
He said there were 584 poverty eradication beneficiaries in his constituency, but the amount allocated to assist them was only enough to meet the needs of about 25 per cent of them.
MP Moswaane said those people had been waiting for assistance for three years following their training.
Furthermore, he said the P120 million allocated to the Youth Development Fund was insufficient and therefore the money should be increased to P2 billion to enable the youths to set up big industries to employ more people.
For her part, MP for Mahalapye East, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso said women should be economically empowered as they were the most disadvantaged when compared with their male counterparts. She further said Batswana should change their mindset and come up with creative ideas that could help tackle unemployment. MP Tshireletso said cooperatives could be developed to tackle poverty, saying some people who benefited under the Poverty Eradication Programme returned to Ipelegeng after their businesses failed. Meanwhile, MP for Okavango, Mr Bagalatia Arone said he was happy that numerous development projects are earmarked for his constituency such as a hospital in Shakawe, which he said would assist in employment creation and improvement in service delivery.
He said the high level of unemployment among the youths was because they were trained to look for jobs rather than being entrepreneurs, adding the government has numerous empowerment programmes which are now taken advantage of by foreigners.
MP Arone said the government has good programmes but lacked monitoring.
While other MPs called for salary increase of public officers with some saying the teachers were disgruntled hence poor results, MP Arone said Batswana should learn to be patriotic as failure to be productive kills the economy.
He said he was also not happy with the results, but he believes the welfare issue together with poor work ethic needed to be addressed.
MP Arone said an increment of 17 per cent as proposed by the members of the opposition would cost the economy an additional P3 billion and therefore he did not agree with it, saying this might be done when the economy has surplus budget.
However, he said the Old Age Pension should be increased as some of the beneficiaries are bread winners. ENDS