By Kabelo Seitshiro
The Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) is to send home about 120 employees countrywide as a result of an ongoing restructuring exercise the Sunday Standard Business has learnt.
Already the LEA Ramotswa branch was closed recently while both Mochudi and Francistown branches have been merged with their Incubators as part of the exercise.
Uncertainty reigns supreme for those LEA employees still clutching at their jobs amid the ongoing retrenchments which began in 2018.
Asked to comment on the restructuring and the ensuing retrenchments, LEA Director of Communications, Boikhutso Kgomanyane, said: “The Authority has just commenced implementation [of the restructuring exercise]. Updates will be issued once this process is complete.”
Kgomanyane said that after 10 years of provision of business development and support services to the SMME sector, LEA reviewed its business model, with a view to re-strategize and align it to the current business and industry needs of SMMEs.
She stated that following the review of the business model for efficiency and enhanced service delivery, the LEA functional and organizational structures were reviewed to align them to a new model and implement a new strategy.
She further said that the LEA 2018-23 Strategy was developed, with particular focus on the creation of a pool of successful, sustainable and competitive businesses.
The axe first befell two Deputy Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), some members of the executive team and some senior managers.
It is feared that the job slashes are likely to be detrimental to LEA’s mandate of promoting Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs as a result shortage of skilled manpower.
The organization, which is not necessarily profit driven, kick-started the restructuring exercise in 2018 after the appointment of the new CEO Dr Racious Moatshe on 1st October 2017 who took over from Dr Tebogo Matome – the founding CEO.
Kgomanyane was cagey when quizzed about the criteria used in the appointment of the new Transformation Manager – a position which reportedly was not advertised.
She would also not say what measures are in place to mitigate compromised service delivery in the absence of heads of departments such as human resources, audit and other divisions.
The organization is tasked with identifying business opportunities for existing and future SMMEs and also promoting domestic and international linkages, especially between SMMEs and government, large business entities and other SMMEs.
