19 May 2019

Government is committed to ensuring that employees across the spectrum work in a conducive environment that enables them to fully unleash their potential.

According to Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs minister, Mr Ngaka Ngaka, such effort by government called for public officers to also give their best in the delivery of services, to ensure that, among others, Botswana realised her dream of becoming a high income economy.

Minister Ngaka, who was speaking at the ministry’s excellence awards on May 17, paid homage to public officers of earlier years, whom he said had served diligently and selflessly despite the many challenges that were prevalent then.

“It is the civil servants who sacrificially built our economy in the years of our infancy. 

This was despite the great challenges they had to grapple against, such as highly limited resources including inadequate skilled personnel and infrastructure,” he noted.

He said officers had laid a strong foundation upon which today’s employees continued to build.

Mr Ngaka explained that it was against this backdrop that government had resolved to award service excellence among employees as a way of acknowledging the dedication that had been displayed by generations of public officers from the country’s formative years to date.

The minister commended employees who were rewarded for outstanding performance during the past financial year, imploring them to continue to break barriers in their service to the nation.

He also applauded different units within the ministry for their team work, without which, he observed, there would be no individual winners.

For her part, the ministry’s permanent secretary Ms Kebonye Moepeng called on employees to individually and collectively help to ensure that the over 20 000 uncollected Omang cards were collected.

Ms Moepeng said with this year being an election year, the ministry had to do its utmost to facilitate the elections by ensuring that every eligible Motswana had a valid Omang card.

She thus implored all stakeholders to join hands with the ministry in encouraging Batswana to collect their Omang cards.

About 146 employees received awards in different categories such as best performer, customer centric, best change agent, long service as well as best teams. ENDS