Speaking to Mmegi yesterday, the BFTU secretary for publicity and international relations Edward Tswaipe, explained that enterprise unions have been growing at a faster rate than industrial unions, which has weakened the labour movement. He said this week out of the 57 registered unions released by the registrar of unions, five have been cancelled for being inactive with a few more in line for cancellation by beginning of next year. The cancelled unions are the Water Utilities Employees Union, Ken Botswana Workers Union, Insurance Employees Union, Botswana Community Junior Secondary Schools Union and Botswana Brigade Teachers Union. Those that are also facing the chop include the Botswana Media Workers Union, Botswana Security Unions and IDM Botswana Union. "We want to mop this into roughly about 10 to 15 industries so that in the long run BFTU becomes a federation of industrial unions. This will be a new phenomenon of independent unions under the same industry," he said adding that the enterprise unions would now be formed based on ideology rather than the fact that there is no union within the organisation. "That is disappointing to the workers in the long run and weakens the labour movement," Tswaipe said. He further revealed that out of a labour force of about 600 000 in Botswana only 120 000 from the formal sector are organised while the rest are not. He stated that BFTU would in the coming year look into further organising the remaining labour force that is unemployed and in the informal sector, which would take time.
According to Tswaipe, since 2009 through a donor-funded project, BFTU has organised the informal sector (street vendors) and recently hosted an international workshop for the sector at President Hotel, Gaborone.
