Stats Botswana, Finance minister in cohorts to understate job cuts, unemployment?

Dithapelo Keorapetse | Friday March 31, 2017 16:25

The Minister was asked to state the number of job losses by sector the economy has lost due to retrenchments, liquidations, collapse of companies and other reasons. He was requested to update Parliament on the number of jobs lost in the private sector and the most affected sectors.

The Minister was to tell the House how many jobs were lost in central and local Government, agencies of Government, companies wherein the Government is directly or indirectly a sole equity stakeholder, body corporates and enterprises of the Government.

Against this backdrop of questions, the minister was to state the number of jobs created within the last two years and most importantly how the job losses have affected the economy.

The answer by the chief of the economic high command was pathetic; he told Parliament that whilst Statistics Botswana conducts Quarterly Formal Surveys to monitor the state of formal employment in the economy, information is collected from business establishments and enterprises which include Government (Central and Local), Parastatals, Companies and other entities in the formal sector, the information does not detail the reasons of the job losses. For this reason, the minister said he was unable to provide details of losses due to liquidation, retrenchments, collapse of companies and other reasons.

The question is why is the minister not providing information on job losses due to liquidations, retrenchments, collapse of companies and other reasons. Why is the statistics not detailing the reasons for job loses? Is the government not interested in knowing these vital details?

What informs public policy decisions in dealing with liquidations, retrenchments, collapse of companies and other reasons for job losses. Parliament has to know the extent of the problem and inform itself on what can be done about job losses. The answer provided by the minister showed lack seriousness from the supposed chief of the country’s economic high command.

The Minister told Parliament that he could only provide information up to September 2016, a month before the BCL liquidation. How convenient! The minister claims that between September 2014 and September 2016, formal sector employment increased from 404, 461 to 408, 983 which the modes increase of 4,177 or 1,1%.

He indicated that mining and quarrying declined by 2,7% while financial intermediaries by 3,6%, central government by 0,6%, local Government (Ipelegeng included) by 1.0% and Local Government excluding Ipelegeng by 4.0%. Where are other sectors such as tourism, manufacturing industry, agriculture and services and others? Why are the details on these vital sectors not in the answer provided? Without this knowledge it is difficult to assess how the economy is doing regarding job losses and therefore hard to make decisions on interventions.

The inclusion of Ipelegeng in formal employment statistics is a big fraud and a delusion. The claim by the Government that they do so because the programme fits the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition of employment is ludicrous; other than that participants are paid meagre cash, they can’t be engaged for over three months, sometimes they are engaged for only one month and pave way for others.

What sort of job is this with no interview, whereby a worker is selected through a random draw, is engaged for one or two months and there are no job specifications? To say that Ipelegeng is a formal job is an insult not only to its participants but Batswana in general. 

The minister alleges that private sector employment went down by an estimated total 641 employees, the most affected sector being Water and Electricity which recorded a decline of 576 employees. This information is questionable. One MP detailed job losses in his constituency alone since 2014 and the numbers totaled over a thousand. How can the country therefore register under 700 job cuts? This information may be another ploy by the Government to understate the problem of job losses. Statistics Botswana could also be complicit in lying to the nation that job losses have been modest in the last two years.

Why does the minister’s answer leave out the liquidation of BCL and Tati Nickel and other companies especially in the mining sector? These can’t be left out merely because the stats collected stopped at September 2016, the fact is that government has this information and it was demanded by Parliament. Leaving out BCL and its subsidiaries as well as other companies makes the problem appear small. This is utter dishonesty!

The minister told Parliament that as a labour market shock, the loss of jobs in the economy has the initial effect of reducing the income streams of the affected, hence reducing their financial and purchasing power in the economy. In the long run this, he said, would affect the demand and, therefore, productive capacity in the economy.

Even more irresponsible, the minister said he could not say with certainty the extent of the impact of job losses without extensive research undertaken to determine the effects. How does the minister say this without recognising the importance of the study and making a commitment to do it? When is he going to do it?

The minister concluded that Statistics Botswana is analyzing the 2015/16 Botswana Multi-Topic Survey (BMTHS), which will provide updates on total employment and unemployment rates.

With this kind of attitude of fraudulence and outright deception, it would be difficult to take the country forward. The University of Botswana (UB) has in the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS), Departments of Statistics, Economics, Demography, Sociology, Social Work, Political and Administrative Studies who can undertake studies on these matters.

The problem is that research is not funded adequately by the same Government which owns UB. The FSS should therefore look for international funding to provide alternative objective information. Statistics Botswana may be a big liar lying to Batswana to protect the ruling party. The only unofficial statistics are scanty, unreliable and mostly international. The Afro-Barometer should delve more into these issues of unemployment.