Passive Institutions :: Mmegi Online

The term, 'passive institutions' was a new one to me and I was intrigued to know not what it meant, which was obvious, but about the number of outfits in Gaborone should be so described. So I asked the individual who had used it at the recent conference on Gaborone - not wishing to embarrass him I will leave him anonymous - and was startled to learn that in his view, Gaborone is decorated, with institutions and parastatals that contribute almost nothing to the nation, but at considerable cost.

Name some, I asked, and was immediately pinned to the wall by a first, instant listing of deadbeat outfits, heavily and privileged staffed but achieving virtually nothing; and then by a separate listing of overlapping, duplicating, competing, funding institutions.

Not so long ago Jerry Gabaake delved into this morass and discovered that there are something like 50 parastatals of one kind and another, many of them totally unknown to the general public but which are, collectively, soaking up public funds on a giant scale. In the last thirty or so years, have any of them been examined, found wanting and dumped? Or have the numbers been steadily rising as new ones are annually added to the pile?

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