Civil society groups discredit budget proposal

ISAAC PINIELO
Correspondent | Friday February 19, 2010 00:00

 

The criticisms were made at a budget analysis meeting organized by the Botswana Council of Non-Governmental Organisations (BOCONGO), Tuesday evening. The meeting was held under the theme: 'Budgeting for Social Justice - Towards the Realisation of Vision 2016 and the MGDs'.

A team of four panelists from the perspective of the youth, social justice, environment and gender took turns in launching a backlash against the budget proposal.

First to launch an onslaught was Lesego Kwambala who said he was disappointed by the budget proposal because it was silent on issues pertaining to the youth. 'A youth is someone who is energetic, skillful, talented yet vulnerable to poverty. Social justice means equality for all including the youth,' he said.

He said youth in this country are faced with many barriers such as lack of property rights, rise of cost of living and shortage of financial services, which lead them to indulge in alcohol and substance abuse. He noted that all of these issues are not covered in the national budget.

On youth programmes such as the Young Farmers Fund and Kickstart, Kwambala indicated that most youth who get financial assistance for these programmes tend to misuse funds because they lack mentoring. He however expressed concern that most young people who apply for these programmes never succeed. He said: 'Out of a hundred proposals presented by the youth, only five of them succeed.'

Another panelist, Ditiro Mojadibodu who was speaking on the social justice perspective based his contention on people with disabilities. He said people with disabilities are pushed to the limit of social life, adding that because of the unfair conditions that they are faced with they tend to be disadvantaged which leads them to perform poorly at schools. He said because of the challenges they are faced with, many people with disabilities never make it to tertiary level.

'Because of these disadvantages, they are trapped in the circle of poverty. This is the issue that the budget should have focused on. We should not treat people who are vulnerable as a homogeneous community,' he pointed out. On the environment perspective, Lebogang Moeti noted that there has not been enough consultation from government in making the national budget. 'One wonders how it will represent civil societies. This undermines the integrity of civil societies,' he stated.

He went on to slam the government's drought relief programme of Ipelegeng saying it promotes a dependency syndrome because it does not sustain those who work in the programme. He said: 'Sustainability means being able to stand on your own, and being able to sustain yourself and your family.'

Moeti further noted that the government's failure to increase salaries for civil servants despite the fact that inflation has gone up in the past few years would make life difficult for the civil servants. He also said that the indiscriminate increase of value added tax (VAT) from 10% to 12% was unfair to people who live below the poverty datum line.

'We are most likely to see many people losing their jobs,' he indicated.

Another issue of concern, Moeti said is that the budget did not address the issue of climate change. He said government should come up with safer technologies that would prevent damage to the climate.

For his part, deputy city clerk, Jeffery Gare said the budget would never cater for people at an individual level. He said all the issues that were raised by the panelists were addressed one way or the other in the budget.