17 Oct 2013

The Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu, says the turnaround time for issuance of work and residents permits is a concern in his ministry.

Addressing the Loapi house immigration officers in Gaborone on October 16, Mr Batshu said the office was important in that it assessed and gave citizenship to applicants who deserved to live in Botswana as guided by the constitution of Botswana.

Mr Batshu advised the officers to always respond to the customers on time to avoid situations where customers lived in uncertainty. He said the board had complained that some officers did shoddy jobs as they did not crosscheck documents, which resulted in the delay of process of permits issuing.

He advised the officers to be diplomatic whenever they addressed clients and to be alert against clients who asked for favours from the government officers. “Your office deals with large amounts of money and be on the lookout for people who may want to take advantage of the office and tempt you in to corruption,” he noted.

The minister said the phone verification method used by the officers to verify if the information provided by the client was correct was dangerous in that people might just lie, adding that the office should come up with better ways to address that.

Ms Naledi Kgopa, the secretary of the South East region immigration selection board, told the minister that the turnaround time for the applications was inconsistent because of system breakdown and slow internet.

Ms Kgopa said there was shortage of equipment, noting that they were using a few scanners in the distribution office. She concurred that they could do the work easier if they could follow clients to verify information which she said was a challenge at the moment due to shortage of transport.

She said some of the processes took time because of the fact that labour and immigration offices were housed separately whereas it could be easier if the services were housed in one office. Ends