18 Jan 2018

Permanent Secretary to the President, Mr Carter Morupisi has implored senior managers to pay attention to employees.

Speaking at a retreat for all the permanent secretaries on yesterday in Kasane, Mr Morupisi said employees were a resource and should be equally managed and accounted for.

“We talk much about budget, wastage of funds, non-expenditure and frequent reports about progress on budget and I want us to begin to pay the same amount of attention to people as a resource, apply the same principles to management and accounting for,” he said.

He said employees were a significant part of the nation’s wealth and competitiveness and were the determinant of whether there was success or not because results were achieved through them.

He stressed that as the goose that lays the golden egg, they should be looked after.

Mr Morupisi said the conditions and environment under, which employees work under, which affect their motivation, morale and sense of self-worth should be looked into.

“They are no different from each one of us. They need to be respected as adults, appreciated for what they do, their roles and mandates clarified to them and they should be given opportunity and support should be given to them,” he said.

He further called for improved behaviours, attitudes, discipline and accountability in order to improve on competitiveness. Mr Morupisi cited that there was a slight improvement on competitiveness rankings from 79 in 2013 to 63 in 2018, the ranks of doing business moved from 56 in 2014 to 81 in 2018 and the work ethic became worse.

He also said for the first  time, corruption featured prominently as a weakness as the country moved from position eight to three adding that the country could not afford to carry the perception as it would severely undermine efforts to attract investors and promote development.

“This is a cause for concern as we try to quicken our pace in attracting valuable investment to expand our economy and create meaningful employment for Batswana,” Mr Morupisi said.

On project implementation, Mr Morupisi advocated for Thematic Working Groups (TWGs) saying  the process of formalising TWGs would lead to more effectiveness and with the National Strategy Office (NSO) appointed the secretariat.

He noted that he had no doubt that all shortfalls in project implementation would be addressed.

He further said the choice of Kasane as the venue for the retreat was because there were a number of implementation and execution issues that would be well served as the area had been identified as one of the strategic growth points.

Mr Morupisi said Kasane was not only the host of tourism but also a strategic corridor that linked the northern and the southern Africa and it was best placed in the region as a hub for communication.

Therefore, he said a number of innovative ways of tackling delivery of development had been introduced.

“Kasane is one of the areas that we have designated as Special Economic Zone (SEZ), along with Fairgrounds in Gaborone and the Sir Seretse Khama Airport area. In our visit to the Kazungula Rail Bridge, my expectation is that we will see the practical implications of the issues of one government, job creation, opportunities for economic growth and environmental sustainability,” he said.

He implored senior management to also see how the issues were manifested in reality and appreciated the concept of SEZ, tourism development, skills development, TWG, work ethic and cluster development.

Apart from visiting the Kazungula Bridge, the team will also clean up Kasane as a community project. ENDS