14 Mar 2017

Parliament on Monday approved the 2017/18 budget for the Ministry of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development amounting to P630 million for recurrent and P19 million for development.

Earlier, presenting the budget proposals for his ministry in Parliament on Monday, the Minister of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development, Mr Tshenolo Mabeo requested P87 million from the recurrent budget for the ministry headquarters.

The Department of Labour and Social Security has been allocated P44.5 million while the Department of Occupational Health and Safety is to receive P13 million.
Minister Mabeo has requested P485 million, a lion’s share of the recurrent budget for the Department of Skills Development.

As for the development budget, the minister has requested P12 million for computerization projects.

A further P4.4 million has been requested for maintenance of brigades and P2.9 million for purchasing new vehicles for the ministry.

Meanwhile, the minister has explained that his ministry was established in October 2016 and benefited from relocation and regrouping of some functions from the former Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, Ministry of Education and Skills Development, and Ministry of State President.

The minister said 12 288 trade disputes were registered at various District Labour Offices throughout the country between April 2016 to February 2017.

He said 3 827 were settled, 1 746 were referred to the Industrial Court, 151 were referred for Arbitration, 351 were withdrawn and 1 834 parties did not turn up.

Minister Mabeo said a total of P1 115 507 was collected as settlement for some trade disputes and the money has since been paid out to the beneficiaries.

The minister said the total number of registered trade unions was 61 as at the end of February 2017.

“In addition, two trade union federations and one employers organisation have been registered with my ministry,” he said.

Trade unions are required by law to submit annual returns to the registrar and the minister said following non submission of annual returns, two trade unions have been cancelled in February 2017 for being inactive and non-compliance with the same Act.

He said out of the 61 registered unions, 23 are complying with the provisions of the Act, whilst 38 are not complying.

“All the federations and the employer organisation are also complying. My Ministry continues to dialogue with trade unions to assist them to comply with the law and resume their status of organisational integrity,” he said.

He said ‘the assistance includes workshops to build capacity as most non-compliance is due to ignorance of the law.’

Minister Mabeo said a total of 2 736 labour inspections were conducted and out of this, 1 521 were routine workplace inspections, 1 141 spot checks, and 74 business monitoring inspections.

“During the inspections, the most prevalent contraventions identified were failure to insure workers and failure to pay severance benefit. Public education continues to be done through various media to increase awareness on labour laws,” he said.

The most common violations to the act observed during inspections is the lack of provision of adequate and clean sanitary conveniences, lack of provision of personal protective clothing and equipment, and lack of provision of first aid facilities, he said in relation of Occupational Health and Safety inspections.

On skills development, the minister said 4 906 candidates were tested at the Madirelo Training and Testing Centre (MTTC) during the 2016/17 financial year.

Minister Mabeo said of the candidates, 950 were at artisan level while 3 956 were at semi-skilled level (Trade Test C and Trade Test B).

He said MTTC has further trained and tested 15 craftsmen responsible for maintenance in government institutions in Solar Water Heating (SWH) in Kgalagadi North, 10 street barbers who are self-employed in Solar Photovoltaic in Gaborone and Fifteen 15 Prisoners in Dressmaking also in Gaborone.

The minister further said his ministry in conjunction with Ministry of Tertiary Education, Research, Science and Technology graduated 1 972 students in 2016 from eight technical colleges and 37 brigades.

“These graduates studied different vocational and technical programmes at artisan and technician levels the past year to two years,” he said. ENDS