24 Jul 2024

The Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs is inundated with registered trade disputes, especially from Gaborone and surroundings.

This was revealed by the portfolio minister, Ms Annah Mokgethi when responding to a question in Parliament on Tuesday.

Ms Mokgethi said that she was also aware of the impending delays in resolving the disputes, and that the ministry had since embarked on digitalising the trade disputes resolution process through the case management process, which she said was currently being piloted.

“This system is envisaged to improve the effectiveness of the disputes resolution process through managing disputes case load and mediation of cases with statutory time limits of 30 days,” she said.

Ms Mokgethi said to mitigate the backlog status of the pending cases, her ministry has resorted to temporarily deploy staff to districts or offices that were most affected.

She also said this financial year, her ministry had an approved budget to establish an Independent Dispute Resolution Structure, an autonomous quasi-judicial structure which she said would replace the current process where mediators and arbitrators were under the office of the Commissioner of Labour.

“The approved budget will among others be utilised for the development of a new organisational structure, consensus building workshops and national dialogue sessions to solicit buy in and input from society,” she said.

Ms Mokgethi also indicated that the establishment of the independent dispute resolution structure had already been provided for under the new Employment and Labour Relations Bill of 2024.

She was responding to Selebi Phikwe West MP, Mr Dithapelo  Keorapetse who had if the minister was aware of the discontent of workers regarding ineffectiveness of the Commissioner of Labour in resolving trade disputes and whether it was the intention of government to improve trade disputes resolution mechanisms by setting up a Labour Appeals Court or a division of the same at Court of Appeal. ENDS