13 Sep 2022

Council leadership from various regions converged in Palapye on Monday for a training that will enable them to use social media to communicate government agenda.

The aim of the course was to impart knowledge to councillors on how they could effectively package policies and programmes to engage various audiences across the demographic settings.

Speaking at the opening of the two-day course, Directorate of Public Service Management - director, Ms Gaone Macholo said in the advent of social media, the audience had become a global audience. “It is with this in mind that we want to ensure that councillors deliver speeches and presentations that communicate the national transformation aspirations and engagements with audiences appropriately,” she said.

She said at the end of the training, it was their desire that councillors would be able to analyse pre-prepared speeches to determine their appropriateness, relevance and quality, among others.

Furthermore, Ms Macholo highlighted that one of government’s priorities was enhanced communication through stakeholder engagement which sought to drive public education of the Government Reset Agenda and National Priority Areas.

She said another priority area was partnerships and collaborations, which sought to leverage on strategic partnerships to fast track information dissemination to raise awareness on government programmes and policies.

“It is with this note that DPSM through the Botswana Public Service College is working with strategic partners such as Local Authorities to train councillors on leadership as well as public administration and management skills,” she said.

She also noted that the Botswana Public Service College had through varied research means established that councillors were drawn primarily from the political sphere with varied skills and competencies, at varying levels of proficiency and as a result, their delivery differed.

Ms Macholo highlighted that there had been no form of standardization set and this had led to lack of uniformity as each councillor assumed their own style as influenced by their background or training. Ends