Some Aspects of the National Budget: How do we go about it Madam Minister? Part 2
In our last article, we commended Batswana who attended the National Budget Pitso and advocated for skewed budget towards development for the purposes of infrastructure development. We further analysed the beneficial effects of that trend of budgeting. We also discussed the compatibility of such budgets with sustainable development. We noted transition from resourcebased economy to knowledge- based economy. We expressed our appreciation of that congenial economic thinking. However, we expressed our misgivings on the way these initiatives are promoted which seem to be lacking to the extent of making stakeholders’ reduced participation.
In this article, we will continue where we ended; however, for the purposes of coherence to the last aspect of our thought process, we will start with that part of the discussion. Some of the issues on the knowledge- based economy issues are not necessarily information and technology ( IT) based. Therefore, due to seemingly lack of clarity, they may be misunderstood by many. Some of them are what we know already that we should be ready to demystify and put them in practice. For example, some of our fellow citizens, before independence were recruited by mines in South Africa.
Based on that nature of income from South Africa, diversification of subsistence farming, which was dominating Batswana livelihoods at the time, took place.
That part of income had the effects of infrastructural development like building houses in almost all villages in the country. One of these phenomena was recruitment of some teachers to South Sudan when the country attained its independence. Another constructive opportunity that arose during some past years was the recruitment of some Batswana in the United Kingdom ( UK) and other places in health services.
The foregoing initiatives are the three examples of Batswana initiatives that needed to be nurtured and promoted by the government for the purposes of constructive skills trade bargaining with those countries. Constructive skills trade bargaining could have facilitated bilateral/ multilateral agreements with those related governments with our country. That would have averted the issues of human trafficking, exploitation of labour, disintegration of those who were involved in trading their skills.
A fair deal for all these hassles, could have been registration of members involved in that labour trade, the government bargaining for fair conditions of service, fair, reasonable, and responsible remunerations.
Organised orientation and training should have been facilitated for them as well as organised records for the skills that were required by those host countries to enable our government to set them ready with a view to increasing their numbers.
If we had done that, we would have absorbed our former migrant miners who were in South Africa and those that had already returned to Botswana in the new mines during the postindependence period. Some of them should have been assisted in venturing into small and micro- businesses back in the country.
These initiatives could still be executed in the development of the retirees in the country and the youth who are both vulnerable to unemployment. These two groups could be given structured orientation and training to prepare them for such economic opportunities. These types of initiatives are organised in some countries who use them to their optimum advantage.
We do not think we should continue to be comfortable in luring to our offices some foreigners using sticks or/ and putting on twisted shoes due to lack of balance because of old age while spitting on our own confined to rural areas who are even younger than those foreigners. Are we going to continue being attracted to foreign young graduates’ volunteers and further facilitate their orientations in our systems while our young graduates have no one to offer them structured training despite their unemployment to prepare them for any economic opportunities?
By way of compromise, let us orient and train our own and mix them for these noble initiatives. Certainly, we are aware of global village and cultural internationalisation; however, let us not use these to our detriment.
There are countries which regularly experience shortage of skills and amenable to consider importation of labour, which if we were organised as a country, could have come to our rescue through these issues. This quotation is derived from Board Intelligence-“What Matters On Monday” of 28 February 2022, Weekend Round- Up,
The Problem of hiring staff when there’s no one to hire
“The most recent jobs data show a record number of vacancies in the UK for November 2021 to January 2022 of 1 298 400, up 513 700 on pre- Covid levels. And recruiters are so desperate to fill roles that they are being dishonest about the skills and experience of candidates”.
It is our fervent believe that if there were any arrangements, we have taken these opportunities by using our suitable retirees.
In the next article, we will be continuing the discussions. We would like to convey our unreserved gratitude to our readership.
The Sunday Times: