01 Sep 2013

Some Jwaneng councillors say they oppose privatisation.

“Privatisation is a cruel development which disadvantages employees,” Cllr Bankinyana Montsiemang of Ngami ward said. “Their interests are never considered during such a development.”

Speaking after a presentation by the chief executive officer of the Public Enterprises Evaluation and Privatisation Agency (PEEPA), Mr Kgotla Ramaphane, Cllr Montsiemang said people lost jobs because the whole idea was about saving costs but not people’s interests.

These job losses, he explained, contributed to the high rate of unemployment which was already a cause for concern in Botswana. Cllr Montsiemang said only people with the financial muscle benefited from privatisation because they could tap into business opportunities created by the move.

He implored government to benchmark in countries that were pioneers of privatising public entities to determine the extent of job losses. “We should look at countries such as Zambia which were at the forefront of privatisation,” he said. “It is evident that people lost their jobs.”

Cllr Benjamin Bakwena of Raphalane said privatisation was an expensive exercise for Botswana organisations because the country did not have a robust manufacturing industry. He said Botswana relied on imports, which made the cost of outsourced services expensive for both the supplier and the government.

“This will result in cutting jobs by both the supplier and client as a way of cutting costs,” he said. “So either way people are bound to lose their jobs.” Cllr Bakwena concurred with Cllr Montsiemang that Botswana embraced a concept without first learning from countries with similar economies and other factors such as population.

“We can’t copy things from first world countries since we don’t have anything similar,” he said. The Deputy Mayor of Jwaneng, Mr Tsietsi Oodira-Kwenje, said privatisation could not be used as a solution to poor service delivery by the public service. He underscored the need to investigate the cause and address it. ENDS