20 Jun 2024

Botswana Federation of Trade Unions (BFTU), in partnership with Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung (FES), has launched a digital platform designed to revolutionise the resolution of employment-related disputes, called Workers Assistant. 

In his remarks at the launch Wednesday, Minister of Communications, Knowledge and Technology, Mr Thulagano Segokgo commended BFTU and FES for their collaborative partnership in launching the Workers Assistant, as a pioneering digital platform aimed at empowering employers and employees with the necessary content on the resolution of employment-related disputes. 

Essentially, the minister said by coming up the Workers Assistant, BFTU and FES had contributed positively to the task and mandate that the ministry had been tasked to achieve by President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi.  

For inclusivity purposes, he encouraged the application developers to ensure that they included a wide range of languages in their digital platform to ensure that they fully benefited all. 

For her part, Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ms Boineelo Lobelo, also expressed appreciation to the BFTU and the FES, as well as Team Live Media (Pty) Ltd, as the developers of the Workers Assistant, saying the launch marked an important milestone in the service delivery of the working population. 

“We recently, as a ministry, launched a Case Management Model (CMM), which is a model for dispute resolution,” she said. 

Through this model, she said disputes would now be done virtually, stressing that, ‘we no longer want to have interface with people crowding at Block 8 for labour dispute resolution. We want to do it virtually and this Workers Assistant function will basically help people to compile all the information needed in dispute resolution, because when you go for mediation, all that information and records are quite critical,” said Ms Lobelo.

 “So, it is going to make our work even easier, because then it means you have your records at the tip of your phone. You don’t have to actually be going back and forth to collect the required information, because everything will be at the click of a button on your phone,” she added. 

The Workers Assistant, she said, was also an extension of their regional labour offices empowering employees with the legality of incidents and work. 

For that reason, she said this aligned perfectly with the ministry’s commitment to enhancing service accessibility and efficiency. 

She said people in rural areas would be able to, even with CMM, log their disputes online and their disputes could be allocated to any mediator anywhere. 

Additionally, by offering real time legal context and assisting in documentation creation, Ms Lobelo said the tool safeguarded employees’ rights ensuring they were not infringed upon. 

Furthermore, the DPS said the platform would also help in enforcing and entrenching the rights to freedom of association and to organise. 

This, she said, was also a compelling reason why people should actually be members of trade unions, ‘because it gives you an urge to be able to do what to do when you experience certain things, as an employee’.  

Ms Lobelo advised trade union leadership to use the Workers Assistant platform, as a good marketing tool when recruiting new membership. 

She said this innovative tool, leverages Artificial Intelligence to empower employed individuals by providing accessible resources, support and guidance to effectively navigate dispute resolution processes. The BFTU president, Ms Martha Molema said the launch marked a historical moment for the labour movement, thanking FES for the immeasurable technical and financial support it afforded the federation. 

Through this digital platform, Ms Molema said BFTU wanted to empower both employers and employees with all the relevant legal processes and content required for employment-related dispute resolution. 

By doing so, she said the federation would also ensure the workers’ rights were being complied to and adhered to, accordingly. Giving a brief presentation of the initiative, Team Live (Pty) Ltd director, Mr Praise Koobokile, said the Workers Assistant was accessible through WhatsApp number, +267 74536188, ‘making it user-friendly and easily available to a wide audience’. Ends