10 Mar 2019

Defence, justice and security minister, Mr Shaw Kgathi has requested Parliament to approve P255.3 million for the Attorney General’s (AG’s) Chambers for the next financial year.

Presenting the AG’s budget proposals, Minister Kgathi stated that the amount comprised a recurrent budget of P238.8 million and P16.5 million as development budget.

He said the recurrent budget represented an increase of P28.1 million over the budget for the 2018/2019 financial year.

He explained that the increase would cater for additional law reform mandate, the takeover of prosecutorial functions from Botswana Police Service and many other functions.

As for the development budget, he said of the total P16 million would cater for the construction of the Maun and Palapye Directorate of Public Prosecution (DPP) offices and staff houses, while P500 000 would cater for e-services.

Regarding what had been achieved in the 2018/19 financial year, Mr Kgathi said a DPP office had been opened in Selebi Phikwe as part of efforts to address the increase in stock theft, murder, and drug related matters, which remained a problem country-wide.

In relation to the legislative drafting division, Minister Kgathi reported that during the 2018/2019 financial year, 37 bills were tabled in Parliament and that 36 bills were passed into law.

He added that also published in the current financial year were 205 statutory instruments and 891 government notices, adding that the law revision order updating the laws of Botswana up to December 31, 2017 had been finalised and was expected to be published before the end of the financial year.

He noted that for this coming financial year, 10 pieces of legislation relating to ease of doing business would be drafted and passed into law.

Among those he cited, included the Companies Amendment Act, Companies Re-Registration Act, Re-Registration of Business Act and the Competition Act.

The minister added that of the P210.7 million recurrent budget that had been allocated for the current financial year, P190.6 million 90 per cent of the total budget had since been expended.

On the development budget of P17.9 million to cover the construction of Maun and Palapye DPP offices and staff houses, roll-out of the DPP to districts as well as development of the implementation of e-services, he indicated that P2.5 million or 14.4 per cent of the budget provision had so far been spent.

Mr Kgathi, however, pointed out that the low level of expenditure for the AG’s development budget did not augur well with the objective of facilitating delivery of justice for both civil and criminal matters.

He committed to ensure that implementation bottlenecks beyond the control of the ministry’s departments were addressed for optimum delivery. ENDS