'Civil Servants In Businesses, Recipe For Corruption'
Ludo Kwapa | Monday May 20, 2019 14:24
Speaking during the 46th High Level Consultative Council (HLCC) meeting on Thursday, Business Botswana (BB) president, Gobusamang Keebine said the move would simply breed and fester corruption.
“Allowing civil servants to do business has reserved all governance, noble and gallant efforts to fight corruption,” said Ebineng. “Corruption is detrimental to the rule of law as they would all agree that without the rule of law the path of high income becomes a pie in the sky. Economies do not grow their way to high income through corruption.”
However BB welcomed government’s recent decision to streamline requirements for certification of documents. They said the cost of certifying documents every three months even when the original document is still valid was an unnecessary drain on the country’s economy.
“Our task is to encourage other ministries to also introduce similar reforms to curb unnecessary costs,” he said.
Ebineng stated that the HLCC serves as a platform that express purpose of identifying paths transforms the country from a middle-income status to a high-income country. He urged the nation to join forces and help the President’s urgent need of becoming a knowledge-based economy. Ebineng said that it should be a mandate that the country works together towards this noble goal.
To achieve that, Ebineng said as the private sector they have had some introspection on ways of contributing to this noble goal. However he said they concluded that BB is not inclusive enough hence they borrowed from around the world some of the ways in which they believe could assist them in moving towards a more inclusive chamber of commerce.
Ebineng outlined that they are in discussion to formalize a Business leadership Botswana forum whose critical focus will be to mentor and guide what is normally called youth/ SME and equally what is generally termed youth-a very heterogeneous grouping which they have renamed Emerging Entrepreneurs.