Improvement of pension denominator in the army to impact lives – Masisi
Pini Bothoko | Monday April 8, 2024 06:00
Masisi on March 11, 2024, issued a directive for the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) pension denominator to be improved from 600 to 375 points.
This has been an outstanding issue since 1998, when the government improved pensions for the public service. The President made the remarks officiating the just ended 19th senior officers’ strategic conference held under the theme: ‘Reshaping the organisation for high performance through mindset change specific to enhancing service delivery."
He stated that the improvement in the pension denominator will not only benefit those who transferred to the Botswana Public Offers Pension Fund (BPOPF), as it also extends to those who remained in the old pension. “I have no doubt that it will have a much broader impact in the lives and families of men and women who diligently served this nation in the past.
The decision to correct this long-standing omission comes at a significant cost to government, but I am convinced that it is the right thing to do for our military personnel. “As you might all know, by 1998, there was higher pension benefits accrual rate for military personnel than the rest of the public service, this was in recognition of your early retirement ages, as prescribed by the BDF Act,” he said.
Masisi said the divisor for the calculation of BDF members’ pension was placed at n/600 against n/720 for the public service but unfortunately, when the public service denominator was improved to n/450, there was no proportionate adjustment for the BDF. The President revealed he has requested Defence and Security minister, Kagiso Mmusi, to reduce the long-standing accommodation deficit from the current levels of around 16% to below 10% during the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP). Masisi said his intention is to completely eliminate shortage of accommodation within the BDF during National Development Plan 12, and make it a thing of the past. He further revealed to have made several commitments aimed at improving the conditions of service for the military personnel years ago which amongst others was the improvement of the BDF pensions, general conditions of service, infrastructure development and others. “I also gave strategic guidance on capability development in order for the BDF to attain desired combat capability and operational efficiency. Most of the promises have come to pass, beginning with the salary restructuring which you jokingly code-named ‘Ntlole’ to reflect the quantum leap in pay grades, some realised. “While working with a relatively limited budget, we have significantly improved the living standards of our soldiers and resourced the BDF to enhance their readiness in times of need,” he said.
Focusing on the event, Masisi applauded BDF commander, for bringing together the army senior leadership to introspect and reflect on issues of strategic importance. “It is imperative that you constantly monitor, assess and evaluate your policies, strategies, plans and programmes to determine their relevance to the current and future security threats.
Your plans and strategies should also factor in the interests of the public, as your number one customer,” he said. The President added that since its establishment 47 years ago, the BDF has been effectively and successfully executing its mandate very well, both domestically and externally, to preserve peace and stability hence the confidence to deploy members of the BDF to Mozambique, under the Southern African Military Intervention in Mozambique (SAMIM) back in 2021. “Thus far, the mission has been successful. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the BDF for a job well-done in dislodging terrorists from their build-up areas, disrupting their lines of communication and logistics, forcing their leadership into isolation, and completely taking away their freedom of action, while SAMIM forces asserted their own freedom of action throughout the deployment period,” Masisi said.
He stated that BDF troops have displayed resilience and the highest level of professionalism at SAMIM, which earned them respect and recognition amongst their peers and sister militaries. Masisi said that was despite some isolated unfortunate incidents of misconduct and loss of lives, which had the potential to tarnish the good name the BDF has made over the years. “We should jealously guard against such incidents and be proactive in mitigating such occurrences. Gender-based violence and crime incidents are an eye-sore and need a deliberate and decisive action going forward,” he said. For his part, the BDF Commander, Lieutenant General Placid Segokgo applauded the President for his decision to restore the pre 1998 denominator differential between civil servants who have a much longer investment horizon and their military counterparts with a much shorter investment horizon because of early retirement ages to 20% from the 600 to 375. Moreover, he thanked the President for having increased the retirement ages for soldiers by two years with the result that soldiers serve longer and secondly their net replacement ration is increased by a minimum of 10%.
“I would like to thank you for authorising the deployment of soldiers to Mozambique because it not only served Botswana's strategic interest domestically, regional, continentally and globally but served the BDF's combat readiness objectives by presenting live contested environments to give our soldiers the much-needed tactical and operational experience, to test and adjust military’s Technical Training Specilaist (TTs) and doctrine,” Segokgo said. He stated that the organisation as well as Botswana have drawn huge lessons from the operation that will inform future force developments and deployments. He said one of the biggest strategic lessons learnt from SAMIM operations is that the comfort of the Defence Policy in enjoying peace dividends should not be allowed to obscure the need for constant defence spending on capability acquisition as this may result in the loss of critical fighting power due to erosion in the components of fighting power (the Physical, Moral and Conceptual). “The dire result of this will be the loss of tactical competency and operational efficiency which is costly and time consuming to rebuild. In other words, we would become at best an employment agency and at worst a national security risk,” he said. Focusing on the event, Segokgo said the conference aimed to come up with innovative ideas of problem solving with a view to enhance defence and security within the country’s borders and beyond. He said the deliberations were to further underscore how BDF is run from its strategy, its processes and how it is resourced to enhance its capability or fighting power.
“The three components of fighting power are the conceptual component being the ideas behind how to fight, the moral component which entails the ability to get people to fight and the physical component being the means to fight. The focus here is to address capability development, capability employment, and capability sustainment,” he said. Segokgo added that despite the many challenges in their day to day operations, military personnel continue to stand guard along the borders ready to defend the territorial integrity.