29 Nov 2022

Government should choose about five sectors of the economy and invest heavily in these niche areas to build large, job-creating and income-generating industries, through the creation of large, Botswana-based state-owned enterprises with an international footprint.

Francistown South legislator and leader of minority parties in Parliament, Mr Wynter Mmolotsi said with proper planning, Botswana had the potential to evolve politically and economically to empower citizens towards living meaningful lives.

Mr Mmolotsi said for democracy to flourish, the country needed civic education on the constitution and political rights, with different interest groups within society engaged to craft popular ideals that could be used to review the constitution.

Mr Mmolotsi called for a mixed member proportional representation electoral system to replace the current first past the post in order to ensure more representation of women and minorities in Parliament.

Furthermore, he said there was a need to reduce the national executive in order to save costs of government bureaucracy, saying a country such as Finland has a lean cabinet of 12 ministries serving a population of 5.5 million.

Additionally, Mr Mmolotsi said setting up a national delivery unit was important to assess policy and developmental programmes in order to improve implementation, citing similar organs in countries such as Malaysia and Rwanda.

Mr Mmolotsi said youth unemployment was rife, to an extent where people aged between 30 and 35 were still living with their parents and struggling to start their first full-time job, despite growing closer to government retirement age.

He also said those who were employed were struggling to make ends meet with the wages they earned given that escalating prices of basic goods had led to the cost of living becoming high.

Mr Mmolotsi said it was irresponsible for national development planning to be focused on five-year cycles, whereas the country needed to have over-arching longer-term plans that could last up to a hundred years.

He also said government procurement process needed to be more transparent, stating that during the State of Emergency meant to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, he felt there were some tender allocations that were not transparent.

Additionally, Mr Mmolotsi said government should encourage young people to achieve first-time home-ownership by expediting land allocation, allowing young people to inherit their late parents’ land board applications and provisions be given to civil servants to rent to buy government pool houses.

He said food security and self-sufficiency were important, and the government needed to support farmers with access to farm implements and drill boreholes through subsidy schemes. ENDS