21 Feb 2018

The Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu says contrary to views held by some people,  the amendment of the Societies Act, in particular a clause on the increase of the  threshold of people required to register a church was not done in bad faith.

The Nkange legislator said during a kgotla meeting in Kanye on Tuesday that the increase from the initial 10 to current 150, was in fact a clamp down on the surge of churches and not necessarily an attack on people’s constitutional right and freedom to worship.

The fact that well over 150 churches have been registered since the enactment of the amendment according to Mr Batshu gave credence to this fact.

“We realised as a government at the time that church registration was very easy,” he said.

Moreover, Minister Batshu called on residents to take registration of both births and deaths seriously as failure to do so could spell doom for the country’s socio-economic development.

Such statistics, he said, were essential for planning purposes as they informed government on various societal needs and interventions that needed to be considered such as construction of schools, medicinal drugs and many others.

He cited as a classical example, government stance to halt a number of equally important development projects in the past to give priority to procurement of HIV/AIDS drugs to prolong the lives of those living with the virus.

“This was done after statistics indicated that many of our people were dying due to HIV/AIDS scourge,” he said.

Minister Batshu also warned Batswana to stop from harboring illegal immigrants saying those found to be on the wrong side of the law will face the music.

Contravention of the law in question attracts a hefty penalty of P4000.

Commenting, residents commended Minister Batshu for apprising them on the mandate of his ministry and called on government to consider constructing spacious offices for departments within the ministry citing congestion at the current ones. Ends