04 Oct 2018

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security, Ms Segakweng Tsiane, has told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that Botswana is doing well in the management of refugees.

Ms Tsiane, who was appearing before the PAC on Thursday, explained that while the country had done well in the repatriation, reintegration and resettlement of refugees, one of the thorny issues that the country had to grapple with was regarding former Namibian refugees.

The refugees in question, she said, had frequently engaged government through court cases in a bid to be allowed to continue enjoying refugee status.

The permanent secretary told the committee that government’s position was that following the pronouncement by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) that there was no longer any threat for the refugees in Namibia; the refugees had no reason to further reside in Botswana.

She said it was clear from the concerned refugees, who were from Namibia’s Caprivi region, that their issue was no longer about political unrest in their native country but rather their quest for their region to secede from Namibia.  The issue, she noted, did not warrant for them to continue enjoying refugee status, hence it was government’s view that they should indeed return home where they could engage internally with the Namibian government on their intention to secede.

On a different matter, Ms Tsiane said the Ministry of Defence, Justice and Security shared the concern by the PAC regarding the provision of pro deo services by lawyers.

Admitting that some lawyers were indeed paying lip service to it, she indicated that in the ministry’s engagements with the Law Society of Botswana (LSB) it had been suggested that the issue be put into law that all lawyers be subject to dedicating a certain number of hours to doing pro deo work.

The permanent secretary said the ministry had also constantly engaged the society on why law graduates of certain universities were required to sit for bar examinations before they could be allowed to practice locally, while others were exempted.

On the number of children resident in prison facilities across the country, the Deputy Commissioner of Prisons, Ms Keneilwe Bogosing pegged the number at 69; explaining however that the bulk of the children were those of asylum seekers.

Ms Bogosing, who set the number of children of ordinary prisoners living in prisons between two and three, said the prisons department often facilitated the removal of children from prisons into the care of relatives once they reached two years of age and were weaned off breastmilk.

She said in situations where there were no willing relatives to care of the children, the department often made arrangements with SOS children’s villages to provide foster care for the concerned children.

On alleged sex in prisons, the deputy commissioner noted that there were isolated cases of prisoners sodomising each other, adding that as prisons officials they were not aware of any occurrences of consensual sex.

On another issue, Ms Bogosing assured the PAC that prison officers were provided with counselling prior to and after performing prisoner executions.

She however decried the low uptake of the counselling services by the prison officers. ENDs