03 Jun 2025

Heads of government entities have been urged to be radical and transformative in navigating the country’s challenging economic times to afford the citizenry basic rights and entitlements they deserved.

Addressing ministries accounting officers yesterday, President Advocate Duma Boko expressed an urgent need for accounting personnel to be objective, rational decision makers  and policy  implementers. 

With the country on the verge of  economic meltdown, President Boko called  for government  accounting officers to come up with a radical turn around strategy.

He said Botswana was a country tottering on the brink of collapse, with a middle class description, and yet not performing to its potential. 

“If  the economy of the country is not performing, then it means the intellect of the country has failed miserably and all must admit to this collective failure.” 

“We are down in the gutter. We must be born again and re-invent. We cannot sit here and spew out the same theories that have failed. We have to be radical and transformative in how we approach our situation,” President Boko said.

He said it was time to build wealth, not for now only, but also for the coming generations. “We have failed. The diamond boom of the 80s should have created for us a buffer, impregnable, but it did not.” 

That diamond boom, the President said came and went, hence the country was now in a diamond slump and down in the gutter.

While in the process of resuscitating the country’s economy and delivering services agilely, President Boko urged accounting officers to guard against avoidable clashes with their ministers.

“Some of you are beginning to clash with your ministers and they already sound aggrieved, citing that they will not be able to deliver on the assigned projects on suspicion of permanent secretaries sabotage,” President Boko said. 

He said ministers at times complained about slow pace at which the permanent secretaries respond to urgent matters.

To that extent, President Boko said his administration was more for agile delivery, which was dependant on performance and cutting edge merit on the part of professionals.

Similarly, President Boko called on accounting officers to be strategic and vigilant in their decision-making, which decisions, he said, must be informed by the source and origins of the power that the accounting personnel exercise within the legislative framework. 

“One needs to be mindful that such decisions are subject to rationality and objectivity, people can take you to the court of law and review your decisions, hence the need to exercise utmost objectivity during the decision-making  process,” President Boko said.

He, therefore, expressed the need to cross check with the controlling and governing legislation prior to making decisions in order to establish the parameter of the authority.

He noted that mistakes were bound to happen in the decision process, cautioning that such mistakes should nonetheless never be actuated by any malice. 

President Boko urged heads of government entities to introspect and assess their suitability to the demands of their portfolios.

“The  positions most  accounting  officers occupy do not only require technical competence, but also bring with them some level of temperament and emotional intelligence, which sometimes we fall short of,” he said.

Such temperament, President Boko said required the accounting personnel to have the capacity to carefully listen to the citizenry and heed their advice. ENDS