Since last year’s public sector strike, a total of 138 secondary school teachers have been promoted.
This was revealed to parliament by the Assistant minister of Education and Skills Development, Patrick Masimolole.
The response was as a result of a question posed by Member of Parliament for Okavango, Bagalatia Arone.
The MP had sought to know how many teachers had been promoted to top scales since June 2011 and how many from the promoted had participated in the public sector strike.
According to Masimolole, 54 teachers were promoted to D4, 69 to D3 and 15 to D2
However, Masimolole explained to parliament that it was a mere coincidence that none of those teachers who took part in the strike had been promoted.
“Our records indicate that none of the promoted officers participated in the strike. However, participation or non participation in the strike was not part of the criteria used to identify candidates for promotion,” said Masimolole.
Meanwhile, the Minster of Health, John Seakgosing, has told parliament that about 249 clinics countrywide do not have revenue collectors.
Seakgosing was answering a question from Shoshong MP Philip Makgalemele who had sought to know how many Clinics were without revenue collectors and whether this did not impact negatively on cost sharing and the measures government intends to put in place to address the issue.
Seakgosing said that at the time clinics were transferred from the Ministry of Local Government to the Ministry of Health, most revenue collectors remained in the employment of the various councils.
He said in an effort to address the issue, the Ministry of Health created 89 posts of revenue collectors. He, however, said that the rationalization and creation of posts has not adequately addressed the demand for revenue collectors in most of the clinics.
Seakgosing also told parliament that it was not possible to determine the loss of revenue per clinic as all the money is deposited in one revenue account.
“My ministry is currently considering various strategies of addressing the issue. We are of the opinion that having a revenue collector in every facility is not necessarily cost effective and other options of how to collect revenue are being considered,” said Seakgosieng.
