13 Aug 2020

Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration, Mr Kabo Morwaeng, says housing allowance does not cause income inequalities.

He said housing allowance was only a small part of the benefits that civil servants enjoyed.

“It can therefore, not be solely responsible for the income inequality or disparity in the public service,” he said.

Within the limits of affordability, Mr Morwaeng said government continuously reviewed benefits and salaries that accrued to civil servant at all levels.

Answering a question in Parliament on August 11, Mr Morwaeng said during the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 financial years, government decided to enhance the salaries of employees at lower level structures of grades A-B by 10 per cent and six per cent for grades C-D.

Mr Morwaeng added that all executive level employees attracted a two per cent housing allowance, while those officers on grades D1 and below attracted a housing and upkeep allowance.

Furthermore, he said, ‘government introduced special Self Helping Housing Agency (SHHA) for public officers at salary scale D4 and below, where all are eligible for a maximum of P60 000 and P90 000 interest free loans for either home improvement or a turnkey house respectively.’

He said the housing scheme initiatives applied to all employees in the category of D4 scale and below irrespective of their location or the areas where they wanted to develop their properties.

Mr Morwaeng said the number of civil servants who have benefitted from special SHHA schemes was 553 for home improvement and 679 for turnkey.

He said other civil servants who were outside the bracket had other schemes from which they benefited such as Government Employees Motor Vehicle and Housing Scheme through which loans were obtained from commercial banks.

In addition, Mr Morwaeng said improvement of conditions of service for public officers, inclusive of housing, transport and any other was a continuous activity and as for now, he was not in a position to divulge the plans that his ministry was working on as the process required consultations with key stakeholders before they could be announced.

Mr Morwaeng was answering a question from the MP for Maun East, Mr Goretetse Kekgonegile, who had asked the minister to update the house on government initiatives aimed at reducing high income inequalities in the public service, which was caused by uniformity in provision of housing allowance.

Mr Kekgonegile further asked the minister to establish areas in the country that were targeted by the initiative and the total number of civil servants that were targeted.

He further asked as to whether there were future plans to be introduced in case of non-existence of such initiatives and also wanted to know if the initiatives included transport costs, to and from work in cases where transport allowance was paid. ENDS