The Public Enterprises Evaluation and Privatization Agency (PEEPA) is currently on a country tour to teach the Public about its mandate.
Established in 2001 as an autonomous agency of government, PEEPA is responsible for advising government on privatization strategies as well as implementation of privatization which includes commercialization, restructuring, outsourcing and efficiency of Ministries and Public Entities among others.
PEEPA’s Mooketsi Kgosibodiba who is part of the team that is travelling country wide said they have travelled to areas like Tutume, Masunga, Mapoka and Tsamaya. He said other teams are in other areas across the country
“We have different teams that are traversing across the country to teach Batswana about PEEPA and privatization. We realized that they do not understand its mandate. They should know about privatization and what benefits it brings to them. We are more concerned about the benefits of Batswana more than anything else,” he said
“They should also know about the on-going projects that are currently being done by PEEPA. We currently have the BMC Privatization process, Establishment of a Meat Regulator which will regulate BMC once it is privatized as well as other organizations. Some of our success stories include the privatization of Botswana Telecommunication Corporation. It is now a massive organization,” he added
He said they are also working on a review of a business model regarding privatization of Air Botswana.
Another officer from PEEPA, Letshego Moeng also revealed that they are coming up with models of financing government buildings, a model for assisting government on the fueling of its fleet in private filling stations.
He also said their mandate includes monitoring of parastatals which is very important. Moeng said that as PEEPA they feel that government should provide a conducive business environment for private sector to thrive so that it becomes competitive and gives quality service to Batswana.
“Private sector can help bring about competition to the public sector to also improve its performance at the end of the day improving its service to the public,” he said.
He also said part of their mandate as PEEPA is to monitor Corporate Governance. He said they will continue holding meetings in different villages to try and sell the mandate of their organization to the public. He said they are more interested in Citizen Economic Empowerment, where citizens benefit rather than a selected few individuals.
On what challenges they are currently facing Moeng said i lack of understanding from the public of their mandate which necessitated them to conduct a country wide tour educating the public. He said Batswana still view privatization as something that cannot benefit them but some individuals. He said they want to demystify such belief.
Some of the responsibilities of PEEPA include advising government on the appointment of directors to serve on Public Entity Boards and monitor their performance, developing and executing a public education programme on privatization and corporate governance in line with PEEPA’s mandate and serving as secretariat to the Divestiture Reference Committee.
