21 Nov 2017

Gabane-Mmankgodi legislator, Maj. Gen. Pius Mokgware says government has failed to create conducive working environment for public officers.

Commenting on the State Of the Nation Address on November 20, Maj. Gen. Mokgware also condemned government’s decision to close the BCL Mine.

He said BCL was a major contributor in employment creation as other organisations also depended on it for survival such as the Botswana Power Corporation.

He further said student-teacher ratio remained a problem in schools and led to poor performance.

He also called for improvement of welfare and working conditions of the Botswana Defence Force, whom he said had accommodation shortage and work-related grievances.

For his part, Member of Parliament for Francistown East, Mr Buti Billy said temporary employment was not a long term solution for the rising unemployment levels in the country.

Mr Billy suggested that Tirelo Sechaba would have been better if it was done in other countries as a skills exchange programme for youth than to keep switching the intakes on short term basis.

He said exposure to other countries in the continent could benefit them when they come back home to share the skills acquired.

The legislator said eradication of abject poverty had performed well, but said the programme was failed by policies that did not complement one another such as stiff bye-laws that did not allow vendors to trade freely.

He said it was high time government minimised red tape and started considering community projects that would be sustainable for long term rather than temporary poverty relief.

“Most of beneficiaries of poverty eradication despair along the way because their projects are unsustainable. These people also need training and mentoring for them to succeed,” he said.

He advised that government should adopt an idea of assessing which programmes to add to those that the government was already undertaking such as the National Development Plans.

In that regard, he was of the view that ESP was to some extent a duplication of what was already planned for in some areas, adding that all it achieved was to breed more corruption.

“In this ESP, we saw same old companies benefitting, whereas our people registered their companies in large numbers with an expectation that they will he hired,” he said. ENDS