Govt urged to create employment strategy
Pauline Dikuelo | Wednesday May 25, 2016 16:36
According to a report compiled following the gathering, which was released this week, a new strategy should be implemented in a period of two to three years with joint efforts by leaders in the public, private sectors and civil society.
The report tasks government to work with the National Strategy Office (NSO) and Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) to address the issue while Statistics Botswana and Labour Market Observatory (LMO) would ensure timely availability of employment data by releasing them quarterly to enable job tracking and monitoring evaluation.
Participants at the summit also suggested that all parties involved should design and implement a robust job tracking system to assist monitoring and evaluation of job creation inputs and outputs.
Speaking at a media briefing this week, One Source Consulting Partner, Mpho Pheko said the summit aimed to bring together the efforts of the various stakeholders in a strategic and cohesive way to generate practical interventions that would assist the country to design implementable strategies that enable job creation, job expansion, job enhancement and job retention.
“We have been engaging relevant stakeholders on the recommendations that were made during the summit and intend to take this to the office of the Vice President who is tasked with assigning the responsibilities,” she said.
In addition, Pheko said they expect outcomes of the summit to serve as input into Vision 2036, the implementation plans for the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP), National Development Plan 11 and other government and private sector programmes on the matter.
Recommendations are segmented into two categories; the ones that already exist in government policy space and the ones that do not. Government and its parastatals would implement all these strategies within a period of a year to more than three years.
Some of the recommendations include the revision and alignment of existing policies and reduction of reliance on the mining sector. The participants also recommended that a task team should be set up to look into the high priority impact sectors, develop implementation for each initiative as well for the country to change the structure of its growth model.
Development and implementation of diversified funding models such as infrastructure investment funds, creation of plans to ensure that indigenous skills and knowledge were also recommended.
Another recommendation was to address the skills supply and demand mismatch to ensure that skills supplies and knowledge development are relevant to the needs of the economy as well as development of a clear national job creation strategy.
The 2016 edition of the summit, which is organised by One Source Consultancy in collaboration with the HRDC, is scheduled for October.
It would be held under the theme, ‘Maximising job creation through effective policy and strategy implementation’.