Underpaid BDP workers threaten to boycott congress
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday April 1, 2014 12:16
The BDP special congress and council will be held next week Friday and Saturday respectively. If the BDP leadership does not address the workers salary increase query then preparations for the national council and the special congress may be affected.
It is almost 10 years now since BDP workers salaries have been upgraded.
The workers wrote to the BDP chairman, Ponatshego Kedikilwe, complaining about the 10 years since their salaries were reviewed and giving him an ultimatum that their salaries be increased or they should employ new workers.
The lowest paid workers, receptionists outside Gaborone and drivers, get P1,200. The parity between the top and the low end is huge, suggest the workers, noting that the executive secretary earns more than P20,000 while his deputy gets less than half of that.
They allege that the last increment was when Jacob Nkate was the secretary general, and that the party had always failed to honour the promise to increase their wages every time the civil servants got theirs. The workers threaten that they would not undertake any duties concerning the national council and the special congress until their concerns have been addressed.
Even worse, in the critical year of general elections, the workers have threatened to quit their jobs by next month if their issues are not addressed adequately.
“Even though the BDP leadership has not yet responded we hope they will do so before next week, failing which we will see what to do. We cannot be paid little when our work is too much and again we are not paid overtime. The painful part is that during election times these people overwork us,” one worker who preferred anonymity said.
While Kedikilwe would not go into details regarding the issue insisting it was a party internal matter, he told Mmegi that he has responded to the workers.
“I had written to them and all issues that they had raised were addressed.
That’s all I can say and I am disappointed because this issue is supposed to be dealt with internally by the party,” he said.