17 Mar 2019

Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration assistant minister Mr Machana Shamukuni has requested Parliament to approve a P57 million budget proposal for the Office of the Ombudsman for the next financial year.

Presenting the proposals recently, Mr Shamukuni said the sum comprised P35.1 million for the recurrent budget as well as a development budget totaling P22 million.

The P35.1 million recurrent expenditure represented a P5.2 million increase over the 2018/19 budget, he said, adding that the increase was attributable to increment of salaries and allowances, vehicle replacement, provision for performance awards, gratuities for contract officers as well as increase in postal and service charges.

Regarding the development budget, Mr Shamukuni said the bulk of the budget would go towards the construction of Ombudsman offices in Maun.

On what the office had achieved in the 2018/19 financial year, the assistant minister indicated that of the 644 new complaints it had registered, 249 had, by December 2018, been resolved, representing a resolution rate of 41 per cent.

He added that during the same financial year, the office investigated 565 complaints that had been carried forward from the previous years, out of which 519 had been completed, representing a backlog resolution of 91 per cent.

Mr Shamukuni said the total number of complaints handled by the Office of the Ombudsman during the year under review was 1 177, of which 768 had been completed, translating to a resolution rate of 65 per cent.

The assistant minister pointed out further that the office had, during the current financial year, employed various strategies such as kgotla meetings, schools meetings and participation in trade fairs, in its continued bid to sensitise the public on its role.

Moreover, he said the office had had the opportunity to engage with international stakeholders with a view to learning and exchanging best practices.

Of the engagements, Mr Shamukuni mentioned the International Conference on People Living with Disabilities, a symposium on the establishment of a Human Rights Institution in Botswana, the 10^th International Conference of Ombudsman Institutions for Armed Forces and the Sixth African Ombudsman and Mediators Association. ENDS