Once and for all government has to take a decision either to revamp or scrap the Ipelegeng programme.
Of late, there have been numerous disturbing incidents in which government, the architect of the Ipelegeng programme, has been accused of failing to pay employees engaged through Ipelegeng.
Either the programme is hogwash or administrators are trying to sabotage this noble initiative. What else explains the frequent outcries that government has failed to pay?
A few months ago, a number of employees engaged through the programme thronged the Gaborone City Council offices and demanded pay.
Just this past week some employees engaged through the same programme declared a ‘tools down’ and crowded the Tsolamosese Kgotla, demanding their pay of two months.
In our view, all these past developments are worrisome.
The government attracted so much clap trap when it announced that some 40 000 people had been provided jobs as a result of Ipelegeng.
It’s amazing that the President and government ministers have the audacity to give themselves credit about Ipelegeng programme when government is falling to pay the programme’s beneficiaries.
It is ironic that the same government, which continues to earn credit by claiming that through Ipelegeng it has created numerous employment opportunities is failing to pay its own citizens a paltry P360 per month ÔÇô the equivalent of a sitting allowance for a Member of Parliament.
Unashamedly, the government announced a flagship poverty eradication strategy minus announcing the minimum wage in the country for those who are gainfully employed.
We will not join the bandwagon of opposition politicians and commentators who, in the past, have opined that Ipelegeng is a vote catching scheme devised by the ruling party.
We have our reservations about Ipelegeng because it does not come across as an empowering initiative and does not seem sustainable. We, however, are of the view that government should pay those that were engaged through the programme.
The endless complaints about Ipelegeng spew from lack of pay to unclear procedures of hiring.
Shame on government for conveniently praising the programme as a success case when, in truth, the programme is failing the people that it is suppose to serve. There is nothing dignifying about earning a job in Ipelegeng.
Although these employees are paid below the minimum wage, it is another misdeed for government to be failing to pay them on time. The many useless bureaucrats at the ministry of Local Government are in our view also partly to blame for failing to ensure that Ipelegeng employees are paid on time.
We hope that the delay in processing wages of the programme’s employees is not in any way related to the fact that government coffers are reported to be dwindling by the day.
There is a need for serious expenditure assessment on some of our politicians who have a voracious appetite to spend the tax-payer’s money to appease their expensive tastes.
It is high time the Auditor General speaks louder about unnecessary spending of tax-payer’s money by the government of the day without accountability, legally or illegally.
If the government can solicit funding running into millions of Pula for the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DIS), surely the same government could find a penny or two elsewhere to pay workers. It is inconceivable that families have to go for weeks without bread when politicians are boasting that the programme is a success.
