In their plan of reviewing the Act, the DPSM will go on a national tour to apprise public service employees of the new Act ideas and also hear from the employees’ perspectives on the review of the document. Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday at the Hilton Garden Inn, the director of DPSM Gaone Macholo, stated that the government is in a transformational journey and one thing they need to get in order is to review their Act, which has remained unchanged over the years. “The Act is part of an ongoing project to undertake a holistic review of labour laws and the main objectives of it are to align provisions of the Act with other employment and labour legislations and bring it to conformity with the International Labour Conventions (ILC) to provide for a sound labour relations framework and inclusive collective bargaining,” she said.
Macholo stated that the DPSM would undertake a national tour to shy away from the controversies of last year during the review of the Botswana Constitution. Batswana had voiced their concerns that they had not been consulted in the review of the Constitution but Macholo remained elated that with the Act, such controversies will not see the light of the day. “For our review of the Public Service Act, we have systems in place and processes that guide our engagement. We engage with the unions because these are the people that represent the employees at union level,” Macholo stated. The director further expressed that engaging the unions is only a tip of the iceberg of what they are doing to apprise the employees. “We also have a committee that is called ‘Labour Law Review’ that comprises of the union federations, which involves employees that are outside the public service and it also involves Business Botswana, which represents all the people that do not work for the government. This is how expensive this engagement is,” the director said. Macholo highlighted that the national tour will also contribute immensely in their effort to engage the employees, as it will help them touch all corners of the country. The national tour is set to kick start today (Friday) in Gaborone. After Gaborone, the tour will extend to Maun, Kasane, Palapye, Francistown, Shakawe, Tsabong and Lobatse.
