04 May 2022

There will be no job losses as a result of the rationalisation of ministries, Minister of State President, Mr Kabo Morwaeng has said.

“No one will be dismissed from work, the jobs will be merged within the different ministries available,” he told journalists during a media conference on May 4.
Mr Morwaeng pointed out that the number of ministries remained the same  despite the creation of three new ones.

The rationalisation, he said,  was meant to reorganise and align departments and ministries in order to increase operational efficiency,  enhance coordination and improve on service delivery.
It was designed to reduce waste in terms of effort, time and resources and simplify processes for the betterment of Batswana.
“Batswana used to go back and forth in different departments and ministries offices seeking services.

Now, one can get services of the same ministry under one ministry, coordination done under one ministry, instead of going back and forth,” he said.
Mr Morwaeng said the decision to rationalise was informed by research which indicated duplication by some ministries and haphazard service offering.

Some departments and  organisations were delivering same products and services, he said,  adding that they needed to be merged.
Mr Morwaeng revealed that in some ministries there was idle capacity which necessitated rationalisation in order to boost operational efficiency.
 Joint efforts of ministries would result in quality service delivery to many Batswana at a time, he said.

He admitted that some ministries had gone back to their former names saying that was a way of simplifying them.
Nomenclature was changed in some cases to eliminate unnecessarily long names citing  the Ministry of Agriculture Development and Food Security which had changed into Ministry of Agriculture.
He said Botswana decided to make structural changes with the notion that it would improve productivity as well as move the country from middle to high income country.

Echoing Mr Morwaeng’s words, Deputy Secretary to the President, Ms Matshidiso Bokole said rationalisation would bring hitherto scattered services under one ministry, department or organisation.
It would facilitate the ease of doing business, she said.

Ms Bokole explained that rationalisation was based on speed, quality deliverability and cost effectiveness adding that it would have a significant impact on government policies, particularly in the area of technology.
“The global village runs on the wheels of digitization,” she pointed out. ends