As a country, we have done a good job of taking vaccines to Batswana but we really ought to have done better, we can do better, and we definitely should do better in the coming months. It’s been two years now since the eruption of the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic in worldwide public and private lives, with devastating consequences for economic growth, public health, human lives, human rights and democratic governance the world over.
We should to better than the last two years, but reports from Government Enclave are not encouraging.
Let me share a personal commentary on the Botswana Auditor General Covid-19 Government Preparedness and Response with Reference to the Management of Government Financial COVID 19 Relief Fund Report. It makes for sad reading.
The Fund was ostensibly established to mitigate the negative economic impact of Covid-19 alongside a comprehensive operational framework for a preparedness plan and response strategy to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Components of this framework included country-level coordination, “planning and monitoring, risk communication and community engagement, surveillance, rapid response teams and case investigations, points of entry, national laboratories, infection prevention and control, case management, operational support and logistics, as well as procurement of vital commodities.”
To operationalize this framework Government established a Special Fund, the Covid-19 Pandemic (Corona Virus) Relief Fund to provide financial resources for the “procurement of national relief supplies…fund evacuation costs for citizens outside Botswana, finance national publicity outreach programmes, relief selected industries and sectors, set up counselling centres and facilities, hire additional staff to support health professionals and fundraise an economic stimulus package post-Covid-19 pandemic.”
And what Happened?
Public finance management suffered serious strains due to “prompt decisions” and implementation of “drastic measures to protect communities at risk and minimise the attendant economic consequences.” Instead of mitigating these “strained” conditions, inefficiencies opened doors “for procurement process violations” especially fraud and corruption and the these two debilitated “the adequacy of Government proactive activities.”
The “relaxation or realignment of controls and rearrangements of processes and procedures” opened the “Government coffers to abuse or theft of public resources.” “All this happened because Government, through PPADB Circular No.4 of 2020, instituted emergency procurement procedures that allowed for direct appointment of suppliers without going through the standard procurement process.” Further, resulting in increased levels of “waste, mismanagement and corruption at a time when Government resources [where] under pressure…”
It’s shocking that Government could respond this way to a health emergency crisis that at the outset directly threatened to kill hundreds of thousands of Batswana, the very same Batswana who voted it into public office only a year previously. The matter was debated in the last Parliamentary seating with no sanctions imposed on the known wrong doers. As usual, the matter will die a natural death or swept under the carpet like the many that have come before. Where is the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee?
Let’s recap. The legal framework and institutional arrangements for response to the Covid-19 pandemic were grossly abused, violated and frequently disregarded with impunity. Public awareness campaigns about the pandemic were not adequately carried out.
Government inaction to stem the tide of abuse and corruption threatened, undermined, compromised and reduced resource mobilization efforts to the detriment of society and the nation. Monitoring, review, and report on progress regarding the national response to the pandemic suffered in terms of standards and quality.
Books of accounts for all these programs and actions were poor, and often non-existent. Internal control measures failed to capture and mitigate financial irregularities and gross misappropriation of public funds, including Relief Fund outlays. Lack of time and late or failed submissions by some departments and ministry officials made it impossible for the Auditor General to do an exhaustive, compelling and more revelatory report about this scandalous state of affairs.
By any sense of imagination what we have in this report is damning characterization of bad leadership, of the worst excesses of political and bureaucratic corruption. It’s not essentially a problem of unpreparedness; no, it is a revelatory crisis and portrait of systemic dysfunction, entrenched greed and self-entitlement in Government.
This is a violation of all effective and developmental characters of good governance . Governance itself has suffered terrible injury and disrepute and this deserves public censure. Behaviour like this is a serious threat to national security, public safety and the lives of citizens and the nation-state itself, and this is impermissible.
Behaviour like this is a serious threat to the principles, processes and structures of the entire public service infrastructure, and the future of the country; no Government should behave like this in the face of an existential health emergency crisis with a base, clear and fatal note for the deaths of citizens, the weakening of health systems and the possible destruction of the national economy and public treasury.
All these actions undermine, erode and threaten the rule of law; a pandemic should not inaugurate mob lawlessness in a democratic society, it should instead reflect the characters of the nation and its citizens that uphold the best of values and principles in society and national life, and above everything demonstrate the capacity of a mature nation to withhold the constitution in the darkest and most trying moments in national life.
These behaviours are a terrible commentary on market engagement by Government of the day. The report shed a most unflattering light on the quality and capacities of Government human capital and demonstrate a most shocking disregard for tax payers whose lives are being threatened by Covid-19…in effect the civil servants who allow such behaviour to flourish and triumph are their own worst enemies.
The integrity of public financial management has been ruined and it will take years to return to decency and moral probity. These findings pose a serious question about Government’s faithfulness to the social contract and public citizen engagement.
The problems and challenges outlined above have the potential to seriously undermine our collective efforts as advocacy agents to create and promote better societies and healthier local communities, to create and promote better political behaviour and actions and deprivation-responsive public policies and legislation, to fight and eliminate the most pernicious public ills: poverty, disease-ridden communities, discrimination, stigma, corruption and economic underdevelopment.
To solve social problems, it is very important that we first close, or eliminate, institutional weaknesses and behaviour and attitudes threatening the proper procurement and safeguarding of public goods, and we do have many civil society organizations and NGOs that worry about issues of public integrity, corruption and waste of resources useful to National Development.
One thing is certain; asset management in Government is in peril unless someone acts, and does so immediately.
Disaster resilience will evade us should we continue condoning such brazen rent-seeking behaviour in the face of tragedy.
