13 Mar 2022

The takeover of prosecutorial duties from the Botswana Police Service (BPS) will take longer than anticipated due to shortage of resources, Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Mr Kagiso Mmusi has said.

Minister Mmusi said this when he presented the Attorney General’s (AG’s) Chambers budget estimates for the 2022/2023 financial year recently. He explained that the takeover of prosecutorial duties was, however, expected to be completed during the 2024/2025 financial year rather than 2023 as previously anticipated.

 He attributed the delayed take over to the vastness of the geographical areas covered by the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) regional offices coupled with acute shortage of accommodation in towns and villages.

“These continued to be of great challenge and a hurdle for expansion and decentralisation of the DPP and it had greatly inconvenienced and suffocated the DPP’s spirited ambitions to expand and increase its footprints across the length and breadth of the country,” he said.

Since 2000, he said DPP had struggled to secure conducive and user friendly office accommodation in places like Maun, Palapye and Lobatse where it had operated on rental basis since its establishment, with construction of Maun office at 40 per cent completion.

He further said the Maun office was expected to be completed and ready for occupation by September this year, adding “all these developments should go a long way in assisting the directorate to effectively deliver on its mandate.”

Furthermore, he said concerted efforts were being made to fully relieve the BPS of delegated prosecutorial duties as prosecution of cases from a total of 34 police stations had been taken over against 83 BPS stations.

“This achievement comes at a backdrop of acute shortage of resources as no extra resources have been availed to the DPP to augment the already stretched resources, both human and financial,” he said.

 In addition, he said plans were at an advanced stage to open satellite offices in Kasane, Shakawe and Tsabong to curtail expenses as well as frequent long distance trips to such areas as they were currently serviced by Francistown, Maun and Lobatse DPP offices respectively.

Meanwhile, he said during the 2021 meetings of Parliament, 28 bills were tabled and enacted into law. Parliament also heard that one Lexis Nexis (Pty) Ltd, a company based in South Africa had been awarded a contract for updating the Laws of Botswana from 2019 to 2021.

The Law Revision Order 1 of 2019, Mr Mmusi said was published in March last, adding “we are currently working on a new contract with a publisher to update for 2019 to 2021.”

He also said AG’s had established a Law Reform Unit within the legislative Drafting Division of the Chambers. He said the technical advice on law reform was funded through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), adding efforts to engage an expert in the past year did not bear fruit.

He said the secondment initiative continued to be implemented through the placement of legal officers at all government ministries and some departments for provision of on-the-spot legal advice.  He said the initiative was a great success since legal advice was rendered as and when needed.

Following the opening of a branch of the High Court in Maun, he said the Civil Litigation Division also opened a satellite office in Maun in order to keep abreast with developments in the judiciary. Ends