30 Nov 2020

Botswana Teachers Union president, Mr Gotamang Oitsile, has challenged citizens to make ending gender-based violence their business and priority.

“Let me appeal to the business community, politicians, civic leaders and Babirwa in general to adopt this initiative, own and make it their product to end GBV,” said Mr Oitsile in his opening remarks during a Bobonong gender based violence workshop recently.

The workshop was organised for shop stewards from 24 schools under Bobonong BTU region. 

The BTU president said it was the responsibility of every citizen to ‘come aboard and provide solutions to this problem’, which found its way into school environment. 

Driving the GBV scourge closer to home, the BTU president said it was imperative that shop stewards were made to fully comprehend the gravity and effects of GBV and school related GBV. 

To fully capacitate teachers who in turn would diffuse the information to learners, Mr Oitsile revealed that his union had ‘placed capacity building as a priority number one and top in its agenda’ because they believed that and educated society would always depict and differentiate between wrongs and rights.

In the wake of escalated GBV cases especially in this era of COVID-19 pandemic, the BTU head found the workshop challenging to organisations  to play a significant role in helping extinguish the ravaging fire of GBV.

Kgosi Mogapi Marumo of Mogapi ward challenged teachers to find the workshop a propulsion towards ending GBV.

In his welcome remarks, Kgosi Marumo posited a litany of questions that teachers needed to address if they were to successfully wrestle the GBV at schools especially.

The community leader challenged teachers to devise ways that would be ‘impactful to the societies’ they lived at, not just the schools. 

“Are your approaches and or strategies bearing any fruits?” Kgosi Marumo asked rhetorically before heaping more questions to the cadre that is accustomed asking questions. 

He reminded the shop stewards that women continued to be murdered, children raped and some assaulted. To this, he drew a dark future of the women and children if GBV was not cut on its tracks.

“Do you have a rapport with your students such that they can easily and freely report abuse to you?” he further quizzed.

The Magapi Ward Kgosi concluded that time was ripe that workshops ended with fruitful resolutions and suggested that GBV be included in the syllabus so that children could understand it at a tender age.

In his array of questions to the teachers from across the various levels, kgosi Marumo quizzed as to whether the current legislations were punitive enough for perpetrators of GBV and if the policies were good enough. ends