BOSETU to offer 50 scholarships for members
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday August 15, 2017 17:20
The sponsorship will cover labour and human resource related courses that will assist in labour education for members.
“Already, government is sponsoring teachers to further studies in areas related to education, that is, subjects that they offer and those they would like to pursue so as to advance their career. For that reason we thought doing that will be a duplication of government’s efforts,” Rari said.
He added that further details and guidelines of the sponsorship will be announced at the mega event to be held in Palapye.
“Members will need to have been admitted by a recognised accredited institution to pursue labour and human resource related courses that will assist in labour education for members. The scholarships will be issued out annually,” he said.
The union, founded in 1987 known then as Botswana Federation of Secondary School Teachers (BOFESETE) has contributed immensely to the development of the education sector.
Amongst other contributions, in 2005, despite professional advice from the leadership of BOFESETE, Rari said the Ministry of Education stubbornly introduced the Double Shift programme and then publicity secretary Justin Hunyepa conducted a desk research on the programme and the organisation adopted and presented it to the education officials.
“The paper showed the origins of the Double Shift, its pros and cons and where it could be applied. Botswana did not meet the standards of introducing it,” he said.
After its introduction, BOFESETE conducted a field study and visited all the schools that were piloting the programme. The results were very bad as they proved the organisation’s hypothesis, he added.
“Recommendations were made again to the ministry to abolish it, but they stubbornly refused, resulting in thousands of students failing and thrown into the streets. The Ministry of Education only abolished Double Shift in 2014 after it had thrown a lot of young people into the streets,”
Another contribution to education development is that BOFESETE forced government to formulate a Transfer Policy for Teachers. This was because some government authorities abused transfer provision and favoured their cronies only, Rari added.
“BOFESETE was put on a Task Team to formulate a Transfer Policy. The challenge today is that the policy is not religiously followed and some teachers in rural areas are still disadvantaged,” he explained.
It was not a smooth sailing however. Battles were fought, amongst others the union fought hard to secure a deduction code from the employer.
Both Botswana Teachers’ Union and the then Botswana Civil Service Association (BCSA) were given deduction codes by the Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, he said.
“The code made it very convenient and easy to collect subscriptions from the membership. There is no reliable and effective manner that an organisation can collect subscriptions from members besides the stop order facility or deduction code,” Rari said.
He said before the deduction code was given to BOFESETE, every month end BOFESETE leadership’s attempts to collect subscriptions from its members were futile.
“This made the organisation fail to meet its financial obligations as the leadership could not easily organise. This contributed to lack of growth of BOFESETE during its formative years. The Deduction Code was only given in 1998 after a protracted battle with the employer,” he said.
It is against this backdrop that BOSETU will celebrate its existence under the theme, ‘BOSETU Road, from inception to date’, that chronicles the road traversed by BOSETU, detailing the challenges experienced, the successes and projecting into the future,”
During this 30th anniversary celebratory dinner, there will be an unveiling and presentation of the 30th anniversary booklet bearing the above title.