28 Nov 2018

Gweta Member of Parliament, Mr Paulson Majaga has called on government to recuscitate the deadwood exercise to weed out ineffectiveness in the work place.

In his contribution to the State-of-the-Nation Address debate on Wednesday, Mr Majaga said the current civil service had a lot of ineptitude that went unpunished, and that government needed to let go of underperforming workers in order to ensure efficiency.

“There is a lot of incompetence among senior government officials some of whom have good qualifications, but do not deliver on the job.  

In the past we had less educated senior servants, but the productivity was better then because people put in good effort. We need to bring back the deadwood exercise to rid the public service of incompetence,” Mr Majaga said.

He added that while Parliament approved projects worth millions the implementation phase became problematic due to poor administration, and that it robbed the electorate of development.

Mr Majaga further urged government to ensure that northern towns such as Francistown, Selibe Phikwe and Sowa were offered economic support in order to avoid them losing their economic standing or even metamorphosing into ghost towns,

“In Francistown we have a situation where the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) abattoir has been closed down and some of the smaller council abattoirs have also been closed for business.  

The Tati Nickel mine has also closed and people struggle to engage in economic activity as they are not given access to land, which is owned by the Tati company.

We were promised a modern spaghetti road, but they built macaroni,” Mr Majaga lamented.

He appealed to government to ensure that some of the businesses that had closed down in northern cities were reopened to boost trade, and also called for land to be availed to citizen entrepreneurs.

“Instead of allowing for Sowa to be a closed enclave we should be ensuring entrepreneurs have access to land and engage in soda ash downstream activity businesses such as the processing of salt among others.  We should unlock the town,” Mr Majaga said.

He also called for the restructuring of public enterprises such as the National Development Bank (NDB) and others to ensure that they become profitable and stop being inefficient and a ‘breeding ground for corruption.’

Mr Majaga further lamented the fact that while his constituency had been affected by flooding over the past few years, senior political figures had not come to offer assistance to people who needed to be aided.

“We often see senior politicians offering blankets to people in different parts of the country, but we do not see them coming to Nata-Gweta where there has been a serious need that was prompted by natural disaster.  

To his credit, the current president when he was the vice president came to visit us,” Mr Majaga said.

Furthermore, he called for a Nata Sub-district to be sanctioned by government and for the speeding up of the hunting ban review so that the process could be completed and hunting could resume.

“We want to start shooting elephants, they are a nuisance.

The hunting ban consultations should be completed as soon as possible.  

We have also been calling for the Nata Sub-district for a long time now, we even called the Zion Christian Church and Eloyi Church to offer prayers so that our pleas could get through to you in government; what else are we to do now,” Mr Majaga said. ENDS