29 Jul 2020

Government is intending to develop work permit system to retrieve applicants’ information and to categorize work permits.

This was said by Minister of Employment, Labour Productivity and Skills Development, Mr Mpho Balopi when answering a question in Parliament on Tuesday.

However, he  acknowledged the capacity constraints within the labour inspection system which resulted in some non-citizens working illegally in the country.

“My ministry is building capacity in the labour inspectorate function in order to facilitate regular inspections in workplace”, he said.

He told the Parliament that their intention was to develop proactive system that would aid in facilitating information about company and employer to ease monitoring of their employment which was affected by budget cuts due COVID-19.

He elaborated that the initiatives outlined would be complimented by Development of Labour market Information System (LMIS) through Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) which is to be commenced in December 2020.

“The system is intended to capture labour market information and assist  in the monitoring and reporting labour market patterns and trends”, he said .

The introduction of inspection is intended to check whether non-citizens were legally employed.

He further told Parliament that Kamoso Africa is holding company for 11 subsidiary companies of which they had employed  1 374 and out of which 25 were  expatriates.

He was answering the question from MP for Maun East, Mr Goretetse Kgonegile who had asked the minister to update Parliament on initiatives taken to fight fraudulent work permits and foreigners working without permits and to further state the number of workers employed by Kamoso Distributors (commerce Park) in Gaborone and foreign workers with legimate permits and type of work they did at the company. ENDS