17 Nov 2022

There are too many complaints from the public about poor service delivery and corruption in the public service, and these are borne of officers’ ignorance of government policies and pronouncements, the Permanent Secretary to the President (PSP), Ms Emmah Peloetletse said Wednesday.

She was addressing members of the Chobe District Development Committee (DDC) here.

Ms Peloetletse said to remove any semblance of corruption, government departments needed to have well-defined anti-corruption policies, procedures and processes that officers would have to familiarise themselves with. “Another major complaint is delay in servicing the public, which I realise is because some ministries are holding back in implementing digitalisation,” she said.

A living example, she said, was that nearly all the attendees were writing their notes on notebooks and diaries instead of tablets as the digitalised world was now doing.

The PSP said public officers were expected to familiarise themselves with all government policies and aptly interpret and cascade them to the public.

“Once government has adopted a policy, every public officer is duty bound to implement and defend it.

Those responsible for projects must own the project and desist from over-designing them, in the process costing the government lots of money and delaying service provision,” she said, adding public officers should be ambassadors of the country and proudly serve the public on behalf of the government.

Ms Peloetletse also informed the meeting about the establishment of the Financial Intelligence Agency, which she said was mandated to deal with issues of money laundering and terrorism among others.

Botswana, she said, had been taken off the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey-list, and this required everyone to comply with all its requirements for the country to maintain its status.

“That means we should also not grow weary of complying with the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements of financial institutions as they are part of the FATF requirements,” she said.

Earlier, in her welcome remarks, the Permanent Secretary in Ministry of State President, Ms Goitsemang Morekisi said public officers should be agents of change, particularly post COVID-19, which resulted in service delivery decline.

She said the PSP’s meeting in Kasane was the first one in the second leg of her countrywide meetings and urged the DDC members to take advantage of it to share their challenges and achievements to help make the country better.

During comments, a member of the DDC from Tribal Administration, Mr Borale Kegomoditswe said there was need to fill in the gaps in the disciplinary procedures and processes and called for capacitation of public officers who handle disciplinary hearings.

Mr Kegomoditswe also called for digitalisation of the General Orders and all amendments.

Another member, Mr Phineas Kgare raised concern about shortage of accommodation for public officers.

He also suggested that the night-out allowance be increased to P500, which he said might encourage public officers to opt for night-out instead imprest.

That, he said, could go a long way in mitigating depletion of the subsistence allowance vote before end of financial year.

In response, Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM), director, Ms Gaone Macholo said the DPSM and the unions had already started the process of reviewing the General Orders and Conditions of Service and gaps had been identified. She promised to take the issue of subsistence allowance to the forum. ENDS