BOSETU chief optimistic after Khama 'thumbs-up'

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Wednesday December 8, 2010 00:00

 

Emerging from a successful meeting with President Ian Khama, Minister of Education and Skills Development Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi and director of the Directorate of Public Service Management (DPSM), Festinah Bakwena yesterday, Hlabano said:

'We are very happy that we finally got the opportunity to state our side of the story to President Ian Khama after the State of the Nation address, which we believed he was misinformed on why we boycotted invigilating the exams,' said.

The meeting that was held at the Office of the President (OP) was also attended by the Ministry of Education and DPSM delegations.

According to Hlabano, who was excited at the outcome of the meeting, President Khama 'was very sympathetic and we are happy that all the other issues got to be discussed at that meeting like the hours of work; levels of operation; and scarce skills allowance for teachers. The beauty of it all is that those issues are going to be resolved even though it would not be all by end of this year.'

He explained that if it were not for this meeting, the discussions would have dragged on well into next year. 'He (the President) pointed out to us that there is need to sacrifice for our country even if it is to a certain degree and we agreed with him. We assured him that our mandate as trade unions is not to get into partisan politics even though our members are obviously members of different political parties. This was his concern during his State of the Nation address and we had to explain to him that whatever we say might have a political undertone but when the opposition parties comment on that it does not mean that we are aligned to any of the political parties,' Hlabano said.

The BOSETU chief further explained that the meeting was not about pointing fingers as to 'who said what or who did what during the examination crisis' but for the unions to state their position.

He said Khama promised that their issues would be presented to Cabinet today, which might not have been the case. 'He however pointed out that we cannot all want to see him as heads of department must do their job. If we all wanted to see him then what would be the work of the heads of department?' Hlabano said.

Teachers' union wrote a letter requesting an audience with President Khama after he told a shocked nation last month in his State of the Nation address that examinations went well and blamed the teachers for boycotting the invigilation. This followed an impasse between the Botswana Examinations Council (BEC) and teachers' union when they could not agree on a working Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).