Private sector should create more jobs

Over the past few months we have seen why we are facing high levels of unemployment in Botswana. Now we are in a stronger position to come up with ways of reducing the numbers of jobless here. And that’s a tall order! As mentioned previously, many people strongly believe that government should provide more jobs for Batswana. And in the years following Independence, government created a lot of the jobs in the formal sector. In the formal sector, employees work a fixed number of hours and receive a fixed salary at month end, together with any benefits and allowances such as overtime payments if they work outside normal working hours. One reason for this is that during colonial times, the colonial government employed expatriates to fill almost all of the administrative positions and posts of responsibility in the public sector. This meant that after 1966 the new government had to recruit increasingly large numbers of locals to fill these positions. And numbers of people employed in the civil service have since increased by leaps and bounds to cope with a booming economy and the need to improve and expand the nation’s infrastructure.

But there’s a limit to how many jobs government can provide! International organisations, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund ( IMF), have recently criticised the government for its huge wage bill. In other words, what they are saying is that government has too many people on its payroll! According to Labour Force Module Report ( LFMR): Quarter 4 2020, a total of 152 973 people were employed in Central and Local Government - some 21 percent of the total labour force. And the number is higher if we include the parastatals. But government is only one of thousands of employers in Botswana! And whilst in the past government recorded budget surpluses, nowadays budget deficits are the norm which means that government is spending more than it receives and hence has more financial constraints. This means that government may now no longer be in a position to directly employ more Batswana.

But it’s no real surprise that government employs many people. Many are, in fact, underemployed; in other words, they have too little to do. When I was a lecturer at Tonota College of Education, the Agriculture department was allocated a cleaner whose responsibility was to clean six small offices and two laboratories each week. So, perhaps on one of her ‘ busy’ days, the cleaner might only clean two offices. She would then spend most of the working day doing very little of note – gossiping, making tea, and idling. And if I asked her to do a small extra job, she would point blank refuse. But I am always of the opinion that the working day must pass very slowly for those who do little! Better to work hard and the time for knocking off will appear to come sooner. The same cleaner could have perhaps worked in both Agriculture and Science departments! If you want some extra work to be done, ask someone who is busy – you are more likely to get it done than if you approach a person who has little to do!

But it’s the private sector that should be at the forefront in providing jobs, and a good infrastructure, developed by the government, will enable it to work effectively and so create employment for our graduates. And recently, Business Botswana president, Gobusamang Keebine, stressed the importance of the private sector in leading the nation to address the pressing issue of unemployment.

In many advanced developed countries, it is the private sector that drives the economy and so provides the most jobs. This is especially true in the UK and USA where just 13 percent of the total labour force are employed in the public sector. The USA is the world’s largest economy with a very high GDP per capita of US$ 69 400 and alone it accounts for one quarter of total global GDP despite only accounting for just 4 percent of the world’s population ( GDP is Gross Domestic Product – the market value of all goods and services which are produced within one year; GDP per capita is GDP per person of the population)! For South Korea, the figure is 10 percent – the country’s economy is the world’s tenth largest with a GDP per capita of US$ 34 900. And for Japan, whose economy is the third largest in the world with a GDP per capita of US$ 42 900, it’s just 8 percent. And this country was in ruins at the end of the Second World War which cost Japan millions of lives! Also, about 40 percent of the nation’s industrial plants and infrastructure were destroyed during the war. In contrast, the GDP per capita for Botswana is much lower – US$ 7 800.

And even in many developing countries the percentage of people employed in the public sector may be much lower than in Botswana: Colombia ( 4 percent), India ( 4 percent), Rwanda ( 7 percent), Ecuador ( 8 percent), Guinea ( 8 percent), Mali ( 8 percent), Tanzania ( 8 percent), Nigeria ( 9 percent), Cameroon ( 10 percent), Zambia ( 10 percent), Ghana ( 11 percent), Zimbabwe ( 12 percent)…

Only the private sector has the resources and expertise to stimulate economic growth and raise living standards. Most private companies specialise in one area; for example, one may specialise in making school uniforms, another in making furniture, another in servicing vehicles etc. And specialising in a particular job means that the job will more likely be better done! So, unlike the public sector, a private sector company is not a jack of all trades and master of none! The public sector is also seen to be an inefficient provider of goods and services; this is in contrast to the private sector where companies have to be more efficient in order to retain customers and make profits which are essential for the survival of any private company.

Now it is time for the private sector to come on board and play their part in creating jobs.