29 Jan 2020

Minister of Land Management Water and Sanitation Services, Mr Kefentse Mzwinila has told Ntlo ya Dikgosi that the National Policy on Gender and Development (NPGAD) is underway pending establishment of full structures for gender coordination and mainstreaming.

Answering a question on behalf of Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs on Monday, Mr Mzwinila said the NPGAD was a tool that provided a framework for mainstreaming gender perspectives in all government activities and other sectors as well as civil society, thereby promoting full and equal participation of women and men in a transformative development process.

He said the long term goal of the NPGAD was to reduce inequalities in opportunities and outcomes of social, economic, cultural as well as legal development for both men and women. He noted that the policy would promote multi-sectoral approaches that involved different multi-pronged interventions from different sectors adding the policy, through its operational plan, called for the establishment of various structures such as the district gender committees and advisory committees for women or girls and men or boys to coordinate and mainstream gender at both the national and district level.

Mr Mzwinila further explained the function of the district gender committee in coordinating and monitoring multi-sectoral including the decentralisation of the policy at district and community levels.

Moreover, he said the district gender committee would also report quarterly on district performance to the National Gender Commission, including coordination of stakeholders’ technical support, networking and capacity development for gender mainstreaming and facilitation of strategic information sharing with district committees and other local structures through the district extension teams.

Mr Mzwinila also explained that the advisory committee on men or boys and women or girls function was to provide technical and policy advice to the national gender commission, to articulate policy issues and support stakeholder policy provision on translation of such provisions into actionable items and to support technical initiatives of the commission including research and periodic surveys as well as evaluation.

Further, the minister revealed that of the 17 districts, seven District Gender Committees had been established and were fully operational, adding out of the remaining 10, five had already been planned for establishment by the end of the financial year while the remaining would be established in the next financial year.

On the advisory committee he indicated that the ministry had already requested names from different sectors to facilitate its establishment and would be completed this year.

He assured Ntlo ya Dikgosi that the ministry continued to raise awareness and building capacity on gender and development as well as engagement of Dikgosi on institutionalisation of gender pending establishment of committees. ENDS