Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources Kitso Mokaila on Monday labeled the Leader of Opposition Dumelang Saleshando a political opportunist.
Delivering a long awaited statement over power supply difficulties the country is experiencing, Mokaila took a swipe at the leader of the opposition Botswana Congress Party for what he called misinformation over the persistent power outages.
Mokaila said that is all that Saleshando is good at.
“A lot has been written and said as exemplified by the March 12th 2014 hurriedly prepared statement by the LOO. A lot more will continue to be said and written both in good and bad faith,” Mokaila noted.
“We shall continue to be doused in a plethora of speeches and articles meant to inform and misinform. This is the beauty of our democracy,” he added.
Mokaila felt obliged as the portfolio Minister to clear the misconceptions created by the statement by the LOO and inform the nation of the status of “our power supply situation.”
On Monday Gaborone Central Member of Parliament and leader of Botswana Congress Party rubbished Mokaila’s criticism.
Saleshando called on Mokaila to single out any portion in his earlier statements he has misinformed the nation.
He said if anything his statements in parliament have helped Mokaila to “come out of the dark and publicly inform the nation what was going with the power supply.”
Mokaila said for Saleshando to tell the nation the ministry was doing nothing over the troubling power outages was misinformation by the LOO.
Minister Mokaila said opting for power self-sufficiency during these hard times would have strained Botswana heavily because of the limited budget which has to cater for a series of Ministries including crucial Ministries such as Education and Health.
“As advised earlier, the vision of this country on the provision of power is very clear: NDP 8 dealt with provision of affordable power not losing sight of the need to build financial reserves that were to be used as leverage when negotiating power supply agreement: NDP 9 focused on the need for self-sufficiency and NDP 10 focused on creation of assets to make the country self-sufficient,” Mokaila said.
“What failed the country was the project execution of 600MW Morupule B Power Station. This is something I conceded in my two Ministerial Statements to this August House,” he added.
Mokaila thanked South African government for their consistent support and everybody for their understanding in enduring the hardships of load shedding.
“Our energy and focus should be on resolving the current power crisis rather than in meaningless witch-hunt informed by political expediency,” said Mokaila.