07 Sep 2020

 Business Botswana intends to use the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to become the proactive driving force in creating a more dynamic, inclusive, ecologically friendly and resilient economy. 

  The organisation had therefore partnered with UNDP to develop a private sector recovery plan to assist businesses to bounce back from the challenges of COVID-19, its construction sector chairperson, Mr Keorapetse Tshupelo has revealed.

He told a recent media briefing in Gaborone that the plan included interventions such as local contractor development through public works. 

“One of our strategic objectives as an organisation is for the construction and engineering industry to be transformed in terms of size, products, services and citizen participation.

Moreover, the initiative is to create an expanded and improved public works programme which will be implemented through the private sector,” he said.

Mr Tshupelo explained that lockdowns had a detrimental effect on most industries including the construction sector, citing road works and future construction projects which had come to a halt.  

The construction industry, he said, had to transform the economy therefore the organisation advocated for best practice in doing business.

He said membership of the sector committee had been extended to architecture, land and quantity surveyors, town planners, engineers, constructors and interior designers. 

Mr Tshupelo said the construction industry was well represented by both locals and non-nationals, it was not adequately transformed to be of benefit to its own citizens. 

“Against this background, the pandemic has given us an opportunity as Business Botswana to convene and work out strategies on how best the construction sector can transform the industry,” he said.  ends