Venson-Moitoi blacklists Mmegi

Staff Writer | Thursday December 9, 2010 00:00

'I will not give any interview from now and will not want to talk to Mmegi. There was a headline which insinuated that I deliberately lied to the President and when that seemed not to be enough, your editor put the last nail in his editorial which called for my resignation,' the minister said when contacted about the teachers' unions meeting with President Ian Khama and the marking of examinations.

She said while she is contemplating what action to take against Mmegi, she will not give any interviews to the paper. The minister is annoyed over suggestions that she misled the President to believe that the exams were conducted successfully while continuing ones were running well. The exams were hit by a crisis because teachers boycotted invigilation after a pay dispute with the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC). After the President's speech in Parliament, Venson-Moitoi admitted that the exams were held under challenging conditions. She suggested that the government was economic with the truth to protect the candidates.

'How would it have been for the students writing to be reading stories about the President or I as the minister confirming that the examinations were marred in crisis?

The number of students that were expected to write wrote the examinations and that is what matters,' she responded when asked about her 'admission'.

After the admission, the teachers' unions wrote a letter to the President to state their side of the story seeing that the ministry officials had misinformed the President in his State of the Nation address.

Mmegi followed with a hard-hitting editorial calling for Venson-Moitoi's resignation. 'Instead of objectively dealing with the problem, minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi was simply bending facts and playing politics when the lives of our children were on the line.

In fact, we had suggested then, and we do it now, that if Venson-Moitoi was a responsive leader she could simply resign her position over her failure to avert a national crisis.

In her bid to stop people from seeing the dirty linen in her examination wardrobe, she wants the national assembly to believe the lie that the exams were not a crisis.

Teachers' unions met Khama this week where they emerged 'happy' that their issues will finally be resolved.