President Ian Khama knows that it will take more than the government to economically empower citizens and naturally expects the citizenry to back his effort. He said as much on April 1st when he became president.
Emang Maphanyane, an economist who has done consultancy work on citizen economic empowerment, says that other than the government, citizens as well as the private sector also have a role to play in empowering other citizens.
There is a big problem though.
While well disposed to the idea of empowering others, a good many citizens are less well disposed to the actual practice and there is ample blame to go around: employers who pay slave wages; well-connected, ruling party multi-millionaires who compete with small start-up businesses for P30 000 jobs; imperfect (citizen) government systems; and, (possibly) criminal privatisation of the government payment system.
Most interesting is the fact that while one may have a poor record on empowering other citizens, that does not disqualify him/her from getting a presidential award.
The disempowerment of liquor traders has already begun and could get worse than is the case presently. Throughout their long battle with the government, traders have exaggerated and at times downright fictionalised their role in the empowerment of citizens who work in their establishments. Tens of thousands would lose jobs if their trade collapsed, they argue. The empowerment that liquor traders afford other citizens has been questioned by none other than Oliphant Mfa when he was assistant minister of Labour. Mfa said that these traders underpay ÔÇô generally exploit ÔÇô their employees and further indicated that there was documentary evidence in the form of chin-high piles of industrial dispute cases right across the country.
However, citizen role in empowerment is limited because as Maphanyane states, much of the economy is in the hands of the government. Other than the control of wealth, unionists worry about the effectiveness of the government system in giving aggrieved workers justice.
Matlotlo Ramokwena, who is the organising secretary of the Botswana Wholesale, Furniture and Retail Workers Union reiterates the trade unionists’ charge that Botswana’s labour laws are worker-unfriendly and that on such basis, arbitration of the labour system does not provide sufficient recourse.
“Our labour laws were inherited from the British colonial government wholesale and have never been properly adapted to our post-independence situation,” Ramokwena says.
The pace at which industrial dispute cases are disposed of has always been of grave concern to trade unions. Ramokwena says that cases take too long to come before the Industrial Court.
The purpose of the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) is to do what is suggested in the name. CEDA is supposed to empower not just the beneficiary but other citizens that s/he does business with. When he was president, Festus Mogae gave a state-of-the-nation speech in which he stressed the need for CEDA beneficiaries to empower other citizens. However, it turns out that CEDA has no systematic way of ensuring that happens. The agency’s spokesperson, Oabile Regoeng, says that they generally “encourage” disciplined adherence to fair labour practice on the part of the scheme’s beneficiaries.
“We encourage beneficiaries to pay their employers fair wages but we do so cautiously because most of these businesses are small and their own income is low. There is danger that if these businesses pay huge salaries, they would collapse and not be able to provide the very employment they are trying to create,” Regoeng says.
With government being the biggest empowerer, a good many businesses have to do business with the government. In terms of such empowerment, actual payment for services rendered or goods provided is where the rubber meets the road but the government’s system operates in very mysterious ways.
There is government policy with regard to how long it should take for suppliers to be paid but as often happens, one supplier would be paid within a week while another would wait for over a month for payment from the very same government department.
A supplier in Gaborone says that often when there is discrepancy in the length of time it takes one to get their payment, it would be a result of personal relationship with officers processing your payment and more importantly, a result of how “generous” you are.
Assistant Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Guma Moyo says that by right creditors should be paid within a reasonable period of time. In his own ministry, Moyo says, invoices are processed the moment they land on the desk.
“The delay could be at the source ÔÇô the department that was supplied. But even then, if it is a case of normal supply of stationery, it shouldn’t take more than two days for a supplier to be paid,” the minister says, adding that the situation would be different in the case of construction where there would be need to carry out thorough inspections before payment is made.
However, the minister also points a finger of blame at creditors themselves for not taking advantage of a penalty clause in their rules in terms of which creditors can charge 2 percent interest for being paid late.
“If they charge that interest, we would be able to trace the delay back to the responsible officer and ask him to account for the delay. Government is not doing you a favour when it pays you for rendering service and people shouldn’t allow themselves to be treated like beggars. I am personally calling on people whose payment is unnecessarily delayed to come forward ÔÇô to come see me even ÔÇô because we should know about these delays. Parliament has approved use of this money and it is in our best interest for this money to circulate. If we sit on it, then there is a problem,” Moyo says.
