President Dr. Mokgweetsi Masisi has promised public servants that negotiations to improve their working conditions will be finalised by June this year.
Masisi told a gathering of public servants during the May Day celebrations held in Francistown last week Wednesday.
The development will see public employees smiling to the banks with fat cheques following the recent 6 and 10 percent salary increments for the financial years 2019/20 and 2020/21 respectively.
During his inauguration speech in April last year, the President emphasised the importance to resuscitate the public service bargaining council (PSBC), which also remains a topical issue for public sector trade unions.
Masisi said: “Substantial progress has been made so far, as a technical team comprising government and all the eight public sector unions, is working to develop a constitution for the PSBC.”
Government instituted a consultancy to review the conditions of service for public servants, the pay structure and the performance management system used in the public service.
The consultancy, PEMANDU, produced a report and some recommendations on the above stated scope of work. During the salary adjustment negotiations referred to in the above paragraph, the trade unions and government agreed that the contents and recommendations of the PEMANDU report on the above scope of work would form part of the second leg of a set of negotiations that should be held between the months of May and June of 2019.
These negotiations would be on the conditions of service and the Pay Structure of the Public Service. According to BOFEPUSU leadership, preparations for this negotiation process is underway. “Parties, DPSM and Trade Unions met mid April and agreed that in preparing for these negotiations, there is need to have a joint consultation process with the workers that will commence at the beginning of the month of May, parties as well agreed that the position papers that would lead to a negotiation process would be exchanged Mid ÔÇô May,” revealed BOFEPUSU Acting President, Olebile Molamu this week.
Meanwhile, the six cooperating public sector unions -BOSETU, BLLAWHU, BOPEU, BONU, BTU and the Manual Workers Union have jointly engaged a consultant to come up with their position paper from the review of various documents including the PEMANDU and the Tsa Badiri reports.
Molamu said, it is worth noting though that the PEMANDU consultancy has produced a well researched report and has made quite progressive remedial recommendations and, “we would expect nothing less from government than to positively respond to such. It will be disappointing if government could institute a consultancy with such huge expenses and fail to heed its advices.”
“We however would to emphasize that there a dire and urgent need that the PSBC as an institution should be resuscitated so that such negotiations be held in legally established institutions rather than in temporary makeshift structures,” stressed Molamu.
