02 Sep 2019

Alliance for Progressives (AP) secretary general, Dr Phenyo Butale, says their party will concentrate on economic reconstruction if it attains state power.

Speaking on September 1 during the launch of the party’s Lobatse parliamentary hopeful, Mr Shaffi Pandor and five prospective council candidates, Dr Butale explained that the country’s economy needed rebuilding.

He pointed that the economy had regressed leading to high unemployment and poverty rates.

“To address the problem which our country has, our party would develop policies to rebuild the economy. We would develop the economy which would grow by 10 per cent annually, with sectors like manufacturing creating many jobs for Batswana,” he said.

Dr Butale said a growing and stronger economy would be able to produce many sustainable and well-paying jobs.

He pointed out that his party would set up a commission on minimum wages to address the challenge of profit making companies that continued to pay low wages to their employees.

He said the commission would from time to time bracket companies in terms of the annual profits and then determine the minimum wage such companies would pay employees.

Dr Butale said it was also impossible to expect a low scale small enterprise to pay the same minimum wages as booming multi-national businesses.

“I therefore warn you to avoid being flattered by some political parties which promise to increase the minimum wage to P3 000 without even explaining how they are going to develop the economy,” Dr Butale said.

He also urged the constituents to reject the BDP candidate because his party failed to bring economic and infrastructural developments to Lobatse.

The AP secretary general also stated that his party would give Batswana a clean government.

“When we talk about a clean government we mean that corruption will be a thing of the past. We are going to avoid situations where government money ends up in pockets of few individuals,” Dr Butale said.

Vice-president of the AP youth league, Mr Gaone Majere said politicians usually played around with voters mind and promised unachievable things when campaigning for elections. 

He therefore advised voters to read manifestos of different political parties and vote for the party which promises attainable things.

“Politicians these days are not trustworthy and just play on desperation of voters. So you should be careful about what they promise you. However, we at the Alliance for Progressives can assure that if we are voted into power, we would address many things,” he said.

He said the party would address the current high learner/teacher ratio in government schools, as it was compromising the standard of education.

For his part, Mr Pandor asked the community of Lobatse to vote him so that he could advocate for developments in the constituency.

Mr Pandor said he would speak against privatisation of Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), since it would negatively affect the economy of the town. ENDS