18 Sep 2022

District tailored policies have been hailed as solutions that could help increase productivity, deputy mayor of the City of Francistown, Mr Lesego Kwambala has said.

He said this during policy dialogue by the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs with European Union (EU) on Wednesday in Francistown.

“Every district has a way of life that requires certain arrangements to bolster production,” he said.

Creation of a free environment that encourages dialogue with a view to remove the bottlenecks that hinder growth was needed to be established first, he said.

According to mayor, local authorities know first-hand issues encountered by residents  from working with them at the grassroots level and were thus better placed to deliberate with locals on matters of productivity.

He challenged captains of the industries in the city of Francistown to be in the forefront and come up with solutions to the many huddles that impeded production in their various jurisdictions.

Participants at the workshop decried delay in land allocation within the city; something they stated stalled production.

Such delays, they said, meant people lost out on possible gainful employment that could have been created by businesses that wanted to set up.

Director of productivity and competitiveness at the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Bonnie Jim said the ministry existed to review policies to serve as frameworks that could guide the coordination of productivity, competitiveness and work ethic issues across all levels of the economy in the country.  

“Creating a platform for collective responsibility for productivity through promotion of dialogue, awareness and linkages at national, sectorial and community level has the potential to improve the standard of living,” he said.

He said the strategy would operationalise the policy and set specific goals for ease of monitoring while providing targeted interventions and initiatives.

With challenges experienced in the country in different sectors such as project finance overruns and incomplete projects, he said a dialogue with people physically on the ground could be effective in setting up ways to overcome setbacks.

Mr Jim said both the private and the public sector played a role in the development of the economy, as such needed to be involved to find ways to align to reduce production costs.

Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis research fellow, Dr Khaufelo Lekobane emphasised that it would be a mammoth task to reach high income status with low levels of productivity and competitiveness.

He was concerned that the country had since 2018 ranked lowly in juxtapose with others on issues such as health and employment creation. ENDS