20 Mar 2018

Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Kitso Mokaila has acknowledged a plethora of problems and challenges bedeviling his ministry.

He said this when presenting his ministry’s budget proposals for 2018/2019 amounting to over P4.6 billion, which was approved by Parliament on Monday.

Presenting projects to be implemented under the recurrent budget of P1.9 billion, he said the largest share of P530 million had been allocated to Central Transport Organisation, followed by Department of Information Technology with P488. 6 million while Road Department got P375.3 million among other ministry departments’ allocations.

Under the development budget, Mr Mokaila said over P2.6 billion had been requested to cover for ICT developments programmes, which got the largest share of P461.3 million, roads infrastructure development received P2.1billion.

Other projects that form the development budget are Civil Aviation Infrastructure, which received P68 million and Air Botswana finances at P290 million that would be used to acquire additional aircrafts to enhance Air Botswana fleet.

On the ministry’s activities, Mr Mokaila said the ministry was currently in the restructuring process to deal with deficiencies in various departments.

He said issues of capacity remained a major problem in his ministry, hence a draft organisational structure had been submitted to the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM) for further advice as a way towards curbing structural deficiencies in delivery of projects.

In this regard, he said the ministry was working towards forming a programme management office in an endeavor to build capacity quality of work and cost savings. He said he was aware of issues of poor workmanship and late delivery of projects.

“The ministry is financially bleeding because all our projects are not completed on time, they have cost overruns and they are not done right. 

So the key issue is how we refine our processes to refine our capacity in the ministry so that we can deal with the problems,” he said. He said with the amount of money the ministry was getting, they ought to be doing better, but noted that was impossible because of issues of capacity.

The minister stated that the road levy fund was generating a lot of money, but noted that many roads have not been done because of the problems the ministry had. He said he was aware of roads that have long surpassed their life span.

“I appreciate the concerns from members, they are genuine,” he said. He further said the ministry was continuing to implore partners to expand ICT services to all Batswana with due consideration to affordability, especially on the internet and date services.

With regard to communications, he said, BOCRA was continuing to provide a conducive regulatory environment, promoting and ensuring enhanced performance and ensuring universal access in the provision of communication services.

Regarding roads infrastructure, he said the aftermath of ‘Dineo’ had derailed the ministry’s target of constructing planned roads before 2019. 

He however, noted that some works would be executed using the Fuel Levy Fund.

Mr Mokaila further briefed Parliament that the ministry was undertaking a feasibility study on the Mosetse-Kazungula Railway link, beginning of the financial year 2018/19 in an effort to expand the national rail network.

When complete, he said this would link Botswana’s rail network with the Zambian rail network to create a direct North-South Corridor through Botswana to South Africa. ENDS