Without dismissing the fact that Batswana have generally come to regard the budget speech as a pronouncement on their immediate prospects of a better life in its announcement of salary adjustments or a negation of them, Kenneth Matambo's budget is notable for its lack of variety from the last one, which in turn could have easily been drafted today. We take issue with two issues from it: education and privatisation. We acknowledge that this government is committed to education as exemplified by the funds dedicated to the sector. However, we think a re-direction of the system from widening accessibility, which we have done quite well over the years, to improving quality - especially of instruction - is crying out for attention. But to do that, we must begin by sorting out the mess that has become the sum total of the Ministry of Education and re-casting our entire philosophy of education to make it more result-oriented. In short, it is time to walk the talk of technical education. Matambo's major thrust is that the government will be putting privatization of major parastatals on a higher gear. To that, we can only say we are on record for condemning blanket privatization as though it were the panacea of all our socio-economic ills. We did so when the the conundrum that is the Privatisation Policy was first enunciated and counselled that because we appear to be condemned to the idea, a more deliberate and studied approach might be preferable to a wholesale non-method. We say this because in a country of people who do not have the means to pay for basic services and are not even covered by the limited social network that exists, parastatals remain important partners in development. Besides, it is accepted that the problem with parastatals lies not in an inherent inefficiency but in the way they are run. The famed Asian tigers have built their economies around efficient parastatals. When the economies of the so-called First World ran into serious trouble a few years ago, they went socialist and nationalised major capitalist institutions, turning them into parastatals. That was what the stimulation packages were all about - state ownership of the major means of production to ensure a more sustainable and equitable distribution of the resources. At any rate, why should even the successful parastatals be auctioned? Why should BTC go that way? Significantly, is it not the stuff of dramatic irony that the man who once turned Air Botswana around, Joshua Galeforolwe, should be the one to deliver it into private hands? More pointedly, why do we disregard the advice of the World Bank and the IMF - the erstwhile enforcers of privatisation - that the scheme is so fraught with pitfalls that it amounts to fraud on a nationwide scale? Closer to home, why do we not take a leaf from the Zambian example to see how abhorrent the scheme is? We think we should.
Today's thought
Government has always put emphasis on the need for economic growth and eradication of poverty.
