01 Mar 2023

Government continues to embrace collective bargaining in the public service, Minister for State President, Mr Kabo Morwaeng has said.

Presenting the ministry’s budget estimates for the 2023/2024 financial year on February 28, Minister Morwaeng indicated that the employer and recognised trade unions were jointly involved in the implementation of agreed conditions of service for the public service.

“All the recognised trade unions and the employer have been involved in a challenging exercise to resuscitate the Public Service Bargaining Council (PSBC) for the past few years,” he said.

Government, he said, was alive to the fact that the resuscitation process involved two equal partners who were legally required to conclude and submit an adopted constitution to the commissioner of labour.

He was, therefore, optimistic that both the employer and recognised unions would apply for registration and establishment of the new public service bargaining council before the end of this financial year.

Mr Morwaeng said it was important that government signed negotiated agreements on three-year salary adjustments of five per cent across board for the financial years 2022/2023 up to 2024/2025.

“The aforesaid agreements further include the review of other conditions of service as well as human resource management policies and procedures for implementation during the financial year 2023/2024,” he said.

On corruption prevention, Mr Morwaeng said Botswana continued to perform relatively well in the international ratings on corruption perception.

“These ratings are done by reputable institutions like the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the World Bank, Transparency International and Moody’s ratings, which look at issues such as good governance, rule of law and justice,” he said.

According to the transparency international corruption perception index of 2022, he said Botswana was ranked 45 out of 180 countries, and third in Africa, at the score rating of 55, coming behind Seychelles and Cabo Verde.

Mr Morwaeng indicated that government’s efforts to fight corruption were confronted with serious challenges due to globalisation, which he said was aiding unscrupulous individuals to commit highly sophisticated corruption and economic crimes, which called for robust interventions.

He added that government would, nonetheless, do everything within its power to ensure that such ratings were improved to attain its long-standing position of the least corrupt country in Africa and beyond.

“There is a need, therefore, to capacitate DCEC officers on specialised anti-corruption investigative trainings.

This also calls for strategic partnerships with relevant international organisations, which will enable DCEC to have adequate capacity to fight this level of corruption,” he said.

Again, he indicated that the DCEC continued to partner with international institutions such as the Commonwealth Africa Anti-Corruption Centre based in Botswana, a move he said had gone a long way in boosting DCEC’s capacity-building initiatives. ENDS