BNPC's Lebang retires

| Friday September 18, 2009 00:00

Lebang's request to Government not to renew his contract this time around was accepted by the then Minister for Presidential Affairs and Public Administration, Daniel Kwelagobe in March this year under whose Ministry the BNPC falls.

In 1997, he voluntarily took early retirement from the Public Service after twenty years of service.

Lebang has wide ranging achievements from labour - management relations for twenty years experience as labour officer, deputy and Commissioner of Labour and Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs presiding over labour, immigration, omang, prisons in the whole of Botswana, performance management schemes and general productivity enhancement having led the BNPC for about twelve years.

He  has served as a member of various boards of directors, including the Council of the Botswana Bureau of Standards (BOBS) which deals with issues of quality and standard setting for products produced in and outside Botswana.

On the international scene, Lebang has represented Botswana at the International Labour Conference and ILO Governing Body meetings and related regional meetings. He has also led Botswana delegations to the General Assembly of the International Standards Organisation (ISO). He has been the President of the Pan-African Productivity Association for eight years and led Botswana delegations to the World Productivity Congresses. He is a Fellow of the World Confederation of Productivity Science.

At the BNPC, Lebang posits there an array of achievements and some challenges facing the Centre.  For instance, he argues that despite challenges posed by inadequate human capital coupled with high labour mobility in the local labour market, the BNPC achieved most of its strategic goals from 1998 to date.

Some of the achievements were: mobilising the national productivity movement, increasing the national levels of productivity awareness from 7.7 percent in 1996 to 89 percent by 2008.

Furthermore, the Centre had to facilitate a culture of excellence in the public sector and the private sector especially SMEs in areas such as service quality, performance management.

He developed and retained key competencies so as to deliver productivity improvement knowledge, tools and techniques. He is proud of having produced productivity practitioners at the Centre, within the public and private sectors including those who later started their own private management consulting companies.

He is confident that the BNPC team which he leaves behind is highly competent to carry the organisation forward without him.

A key milestone he achieved was the installation of a performance management system in both local and central government structures in Botswana.  'I have personally facilitated the process with various BNPC teams and I am delighted to see this sector leading the economy in terms of organisational transformation'', he says.

Several private sector companies have benefitted from interventions by the BNPC in areas such service culture, 5S and Kaizen, balance score card.