Batswana Shun Farm Labourers� Jobs

Monitor Editor | Monday May 4, 2015 15:35

The farmers were spot on, they need results oriented, reliable and productive labour force if they are to produce satisfactory yields in their farms. There is no denying that Zimbabweans especially are more productive, and largely more educated than their Botswana counterparts. Most importantly Batswana’s attitude to work has been well documented in various research findings as not up to scratch.

Therefore when an employer has the chance to mix both Zimbabwean and Botswana workers, our labour laws need not to be rigid. The unproductive local worker could learn and copy the excellence of their Zimbabwean counterparts to good effects. The agriculture sector is perhaps one area where we really have to open up for Zimbabweans for the good of our own production efforts. It is well known that Batswana shun jobs such as farm works as a curse.

It will take many years for our people to realise and appreciate that farm work is just as good as working at a fuel filling station, garage, or messenger at a corporation. Batswana would rather opt for Ipelegeng jobs than take up a farm labourers’ piece-job. Perhaps the Minister should have advised his constituents that there are exceptions to the rule, because it is a fact that we have many Zimbabwean immigrants in Botswana working legally in farms in Botswana today, just as we have the immigrants working legally in homes as maids, one of the many jobs that are not taken seriously by the locals. Sometimes certain decisions that we take in the name of local empowerment only have the reverse effects.

Batswana must wake up from slumber and catch up with the rest of the world in terms of attitude to work and commitment to productivity. Our laws should empower an investor to hire their own choice of human resources, the best they can find, even if it means importing them from Zimbabwe, if that would guarantee the best yields. This can have the positive effect of transforming our economy in the short and long terms.

We can therefore look at the Zimbabwean immigrant not as a threat to job security per se, but rather as an opportunity to fine-tune our productivity and beef up our skills base as the less knowledgeable locals learn invaluable lessons from their more skilled immigrants.  By so doing we would be following the examples of other forward thinking, more progressive economies, such as those in the first world that are open to skilled labour coming in to sustain their economies.