06 Mar 2019

Members of Parliament have thrown their weight behind budget proposals for the Ministry of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs.

Debating the ministry’s budget proposals presented by Minister Ngaka Ngaka on March 5, parliamentarians, however, raised different viewpoints regarding certain responsibilities of the ministry.

Mahalapye East lawmaker, Ms Botlogile Tshireletso, hailed the ministry’s intended move to bring customary and religious marriages at par with common law marriages.

Ms Tshireletso said the proposed change would help empower women under the two types of marriages as they had for years been subjected to unfair treatment under the said marriage regimes, which viewed them as unequal to their husbands.

The MP, in addition, said time was ripe for Botswana to have a Child Marriage Act, the purpose of which she noted would among others, be to criminalise the entering into marriage with a minor.

She said children needed to be allowed to grow into maturity and thereafter decide on their own whether they wished to get into marriage and with whom.

On gender equality, she appealed for the bridging of gaps between men and women particularly in the political sphere.

She in particular decried the gender disparity in the representation of women in local authorities and at parliament, where key decisions were being made.

She also condemned continuing incidences of gender-based violence, which she said were often perpetuated against women and the girl-child.

Furthermore, she said government should make it easy for people who had been given demeaning names at birth to be able to change to prevent situations where such people had to endure ridicule in their entire lives.

MP Samuel Rantuana of Ramotswa wondered if indeed it was true that only 1.7 million births had been registered in the country since 1968.

Mr Rantuana said if the statistics were true, then the country’s growth was rather slow, and as such measures had to be put in place to encourage child-bearing.

One of the ways that could be used, he said, was to promote the institution of marriage as well as to give monetary incentives to certain groups of people such as single parents and parents with a certain number of children.

Sefhare-Ramokgonami legislator, Ms Dorcas Makgato noted that despite the interventions currently in place to address gender-based violence, a lot more still needed to be done to deal with the problem.

Of the other things that could be done, she cited the empowerment of the boy-child, arguing that an empowered girl-child and a disempowered boy-child was a bad equation.

On women empowerment programmes, Ms Makgato said women in the country were complaining that resources meant to empower them were not being distributed equitably, with some alleging that those in urban areas were benefitting more than their counterparts in rural areas.

The MP thus implored government to consider making funding under the programme constituency-based so as to level the playing field for potential beneficiaries.

Also, she said women were of the view that government should, under the programme, consider funding medium and large scale enterprises owned by women instead of only providing for the financing of SMMEs.

On another issue, Ms Makgato also thanked the ministry for having pushed the backlog of people who had been rendered stateless by the need to renounce their citizenships upon attaining the age of 21.

MP Abram Kesupile of Kanye North urged government to consider granting Zimbabwean nationals temporary work permits to allow them to work lawfully in the country.

He said deporting them back to their native country every now and then was costly to government as it entailed the use of a lot of resources.

On a different issue, Mr Kesupile said the renaming of the ministry to Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs from the then Women’s Affairs was a bad move that would result in women becoming more and more disenfranchised as the ministry could no longer maintain sharp focus on issues relating to women. ENDS