The People’s Ministry is working on establishing a unit whose main mandate will be premised around issues of transparency and ethics.

The formulation of this unit comes about as a result of various challenges faced by the Ministry, which range from poor imple­mentation and supervision of projects, poor coordination of pro­grams, and social safety nets not impacting positively on the benefi­ciaries, but to name a few.

Addressing a Forum for Chairper­sons and Mayors last Friday, Hon. Mokalake stated “to address these problems, the Ministry will soon have a Risk Management and Com­pliance Unit which will be opera­tional in July 2011.”

In the same breath Hon. Mokalake expressed his concern about poor performance of staff in the Minis­try, which he believes has the po­tential to manifest itself in the way client concerns are handled.

According to Mokalake, “customer service involves listening to cus­tomers, obtaining their input and feedback and using this informa­tion to make changes that add value to services.” Furthermore, he called upon Local Authorities (LAs) to formulate and implement strate­gies that would enable them to deal with problems immediately, and let their customers know what they have done or are doing to resolve such issues.

Also on the agenda at the forum were preparations for the hando­ver of internal roads between the Ministry of Transport and Com­munications (MTC), and LAs which were planned for April this year. Currently, the preparations are con­tinuing and Councils are currently reconciling their road inventories to determine which roads would be handed over. The two ministries i.e. MTC and MLG are currently fi­nalizing the submitted inventories before handover to MTC. The inten­tion of this initiative is to streamline responsibilities between the re­spective Ministries, in terms of road construction and maintenance in Botswana and to avoid duplication of efforts.

In parting, Hon. Mokalake applaud­ed the People’s Ministry for be­ing a responsible organization, through its participation in initia­tives aimed at addressing the plight of the needy. To date the Ministry and Local Authorities have engaged in Community Service Day activities which have included construction of houses, building ablution facili­ties, tree planting, provision of pre-paid stand pipes, and backyard gar­dens, but to name a few.