09 Feb 2025

As the nation looks forward to the national budget tomorrow, trade unions have high hopes that the finance minister’s maiden budget would address what they bargained for, ahead of national elections.

Prior to elections, Botswana Federation of Trade Unions (BFTU) conducted a countrywide tour to induct workers on a manifesto that focused on the plight of workers and prevailing socio-economic challenges in order to make informed decisions when voting leaders.

Among other things, the manifesto also deliberated at length against corruption and economic crimes and called for good governance and strong institutions.

In an interview with Unions (BFTU) Secretary General, Mr Tshepiso Mbereki said they expected government to mirror on a broad range of issues, among them unemployment particularly among the youth, employee empowerment, corruption, economic crime, citizen empowerment, accountability, good governance, and the strengthening of state and oversight institutions.

On creation of employment, he said the budget should reflect how jobs would be created especially for young people and jobless graduates, detailing the numbers and timelines for such and the sectors that were targeted to employ a high number of people.

He said it would also be imperative that government committed to implementation of National Health Insurance and Universal Health Coverage that resonated with government’s strong focus on human rights based approach.

“As a trade union, we want fundamental issues of health to be addressed, so we want details on health insurance and how that will be executed,” he said.

On other issues, he said the budget should also reflect how the declining standard of education would be addressed,  be it improving the learning environment and infrastructure, teaching profession welfare and targeted education that focused on developing specific skills and competencies needed by the market.

“The budget should address deficiencies that do not bring value for money invested in education,” he said.

He was concerned that previous budget invested substantial money towards education, but there was nothing to show for it.

Mr Mbereki also cautioned that government should invest on efforts towards responding to the scourge of GBV and other social ills.

Botswana Federation of Public, Private and Parastatals Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) secretary general, Mr Robert Rabasimane said so far they were impressed about budget talks by finance minister, Mr Ndaba Gaolathe, ahead of 2025/2026 budget presentation.

“This is important because it bring the general public closer to the public budgeting mechanisms and leverage a participatory budgeting system where more people are included in the process of allocation of state funds,” he said.

He said BOFEPUSU was expecting the budget to reflect on workers’ rights in the political economy.

He said having assumed state power recently, the new administration should focus on a plethora of problems lingering from previous administrations.

“The mandate acquired through elections has to be fulfilled to the full expectations of stakeholders across the political spectrum,” he said.

He said the federation looked forward to see the new administration advancing the working class interests and Batswana in general.

In particular, he said there was need for government to commit on living wage and minimum wage through a policy.

In that regard, he said there should be clarity about the two, adding that government had not made commitments to improve the lowest salary scale in the public service to match the desired living wage.

“This should be informed by some imperial study that points to how much the living wage should be,” he said.

Mr Rabasimane said they were expecting the minister to reveal if funding would be availed for full implementation of Outcome Based Education (OBE) that needed infrastructure to support efficient implementation of OBE.

He said infrastructure in schools was a cause for concern, hence the need for efforts to improve school infrastructure including facilities for practical lessons currently in deplorable state

 Closing leakages in public funds, he said they expected introduction of public sector reforms that would water tighten the budgetary and public accountability systems to enhance efficiency in public finances.

To that end, Mr Rabasimane said BOFEPUSU would like to see budget reflective of efforts to restore public confidence on state owned parastatals by concrete responses on clarion calls to close leakages due to administrative impropriety and mismanagement of public funds by some parastatals.

Regarding education, he said BOFEPUSU expected the new administration to demonstrate a political will towards resuscitation of school sports, extracurricular activities to enable the nurturing of talent at grassroots.

On healthcare, he said the federation expected the minister to announce the resourcing and transformation of health facilities with people centered health services. ENDS