18 Feb 2014

A professional was engaged in 2007 to translate the then Out of School Youth Grant forms from English to Setswana to simplify and enable all applicants to use them without any language barrier.

The Minister of Youth, Sport and Culture, Mr Shaw Kgathi said despite the noble effort, applicants continued to prefer the English version of the forms.

Answering a question in Parliament from Member of Parliament for Tonota North Mr Fidelis Molao on Monday, February 17, Minister Kgathi said, “consequently, when we designed the Youth Development Fund forms in 2009, we focused on simplifying the business language used as opposed to translating them to Setswana."

He said he did not have a reason to consider translating the Youth Development Fund forms from English to Setswana. Mr Kgathi told the house that from his ministry’s experience, there was no direct relationship between the language used in the Youth Development Fund forms and the submission rate or engagement of consultants by the youth to assist in completing the forms.

He said, in fact, young people who engaged consultants do so with the hope that by using the expertise and experience of such consultants, they would gain a competitive urge over other young people in terms of generating winning project proposals.

The minister said his ministry did not encourage the youth to use consultants to fill the forms, because it was expensive for them and also had the effect of detaching young people from their projects, leading to project failure.

Furthermore, Mr Kgathi said if a young person had used a consultant to generate a proposal, that became obvious when they could not sufficiently answer for their proposal during interviews and field trips where their preparedness to go into business was assessed.

“As a Ministry, we have assigned our field officers to guide prospective applicants in completing the forms. As part of our pre-funding activities, we also organise training seminars for potential youth entrepreneurs where the application forms are explained,” he said.

MP Molao had asked the minister if he would consider translating the Youth Development Fund forms from English to Setswana to simplify and enable all applications to understand them. He also wanted to know whether the scenario would not encourage more young people to fill in the forms for themselves without having to engage consultants. ENDS