26 Jan 2020

The for Francistown South MP, Mr Wynter Mmolotsi says government has introduced the BlueCard to cater for Batswana citizens who are married to foreigners and have moved to countries that do not allow dual citizenship.

Addressing a kgotla meeting in Matante West ward in Block 2 in his constituency on January 23, Mr Mmolotsi said that the introduction of the Botswana Blue Card followed consultations on the Citizenship Amendment Bill regarding dual citizenship.

He said the card, ‘which does not have expiry date, is produced by the holder at any entry gazetted point.’ 

Therefore Mr Mmolotsi appealed to those affected to apply for the card, saying government decided to introduce the card because those affected were Batswana ‘who grew up here and their heritage is here in Botswana.’ The MP further said the BlueCard would give those in possession access into Botswana at any time they wished and was dependent on how long they wanted to stay in the country.

On other issues, the MP briefed the residents on the state of the economy, and the language policy of Botswana which will pave way for the introduction of teaching of students in their mother-tongue in primary schools and Gender Based Violence (GBV)

He explained that it was expected that the economy would grow by 4.4 per cent in 2020 after it grew by 3.6 percent in 2019.

However, Mr Mmolotsi said the growth of the economy in 2020 was not dependent on mineral but other economic sectors such as tourism, banking and manufacturing.

The MP said minerals’ prices especially for the diamonds were declining due to synesthetic diamonds which had penetrated the world market. He explained that inflation was expected to remain at 3.2 per cent whilst foreign reserves stood at P74.2 billion.

Mr Mmolotsi also said government was in the process of formulating the language policy and its implementation in education sector and in society.

He said the formulation of the language policy was meant to provide room for the use of the different indigenous languages at primary school.

Mr Mmolotsi further stated that current practice of over emphasising English and Setswana, within the Botswana context, denied the nation the opportunity of understanding environmental issues from diverse perspectives.

He said the language policy would introduce an outcome based education system which encompassed multiple pathways in secondary schools to identify which subject(s) students were more interested in.

Still on education, Mr Mmolotsi said lack of pre-primary classes at some primary schools contributed to poor performance saying out of the 755 primary schools in Botswana, only 590 had pre-schools. 

Therefore, he said government had taken a decision to build pre-schools in all the remaining primary schools.

Mr Mmolotsi said that government had agreed that Maun secondary school would introduce tourism and related subjects because it has been established in a tourist attraction zone while Moeng College would focus on agriculture.

Concerning Gender Based Violence (GBV), the Francistown South legislator statistics showed that this type of violence was increasing at an alarming rate in Botswana. 

He said research suggested that the GBV affected both genders (male and female) and appealed to parents to avoid the offence because it affected the children.

He urged residents to speak out openly and publicly about issues of GBV. ends