allAfrica.com: Botswana: Why Burden Motsumi? (Page 1 of 1)

Recently President Ian Khama named his new cabinet. Khama has retained most of the Ministers from the old cabinet. But there are a number of new faces, and also some missing in action.

One tends to think that Khama retained those he has retained and dropped those he has dropped basing on their merits and demerits. I want to believe that Khama looked at the performance of the ministers at their current ministries and based his selection criterion on that performance on whether to retain, move or drop them. If indeed this is the case, then Khama has missed it when he redeployed Lesego Motsumi to the Ministry of Health.

To start with Motsumi's former Ministry of Works and Transport has performed poorly since she became its minister. There are a number of cases that one can point out to prove this underperformance. Take the for example road between Nata and Kasane, which is an important connection to the all important tourist destination of Chobe. This road is almost non- existent. People's vehicles continuously breakdown on this road because of the deplorable condition it is in. The road has been in this bad state for a longtime while minister Motsumi could only watch and feel sorry. This has affected the tourism business in the Chobe area as some tourists are hesitant to take a second chance of driving on this road again. Indeed, if Khama has taken such issues into consideration, definitely Motsumi should not have remained minister, not even in another ministry.

When Motsumi was campaigning to be elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Ramotswa in 1999, she promised Ramotswa electorates that if elected, she would ensure that Boatle - Ramotswa road will be upgraded. But ten years down the line, the road has gotten from bad to worse even when the MP of the area was at the helm of the ministry responsible for roads. This is one of the reasons why Ramotswa which used to be a strong hold of the ruling party, is now slipping to the opposition Botswana Congress Party (BCP). The people of Ramotswa have given up on Motsumi. What Khama saw as a potential in Motsumi, the people of Ramotswa do not see. They only see someone who has failed to deliver. One other case that can also demonstrate Motsumi's failure at her former Ministry is the Mahalapye- Debete road which has now taken a good three years to construct yet there is still no sign that it will be completed any time soon. This road is approximately 85kms. There have been many accidents on this road which have claimed a number of precious lives because of its unending construction, but Motsumi remained unmoved by all this. One then wonders that if 85kms road can take more than three years to construct under Minister Motsumi, how long would it take to construct a similar road from Nata to Maun which is 301 kms? My calculation tells me that it will take 11 years. I do not believe that this is the kind of person Khama would need as he presses on with his project implementation drive.

There have been calls from the public to make the busy Gaborone - Lobatse road a dual carriage. These calls escalated when Motsumi was Minister of Works and Transport, but nothing has happened to that effect. There are a number of reasons that warrant dual carriage for this particular road. Despite being very busy and connecting Botswana to the neighbouring South Africa, a lot of precious lives have been terminated on this road mainly due to head-on collisions. This should have at least emotionally moved the minister to act. By acting I mean actually influencing policy. The road might have been ear-marked for the next NDP planning period, but there are things which cannot just wait. In fact, the whole of A1 road, which is from Ramatlabama to Ramokgwebana should be a dual carriage by now. In this time and age, we do not need single lanes on major high ways.

It needs to be stated that it was during Motsumi's tenure at Works and Transport that we saw the wastage of public funds through cattle chasing programmes. How do you contract people, pay them and never monitor or penalise them when they do not do their work. People continued to die on the roads which have cattle chasing companies because of poor supervision from the Department of Roads. But those companies did get their contract cheques nevertheless, without any punitive measures imposed on them. This is total wastage.

There is quite a lot that one can talk about with regards to failure of the Ministry of Works and Transport under Minister Motsumi. One can still talk about the handling of the aborted privatisation of Air Botswana, Central Transport Organisation (CTO) and poor state of completed roads. Indeed, she should have been one of the causalities in Khama's cabinet appointments! In fact, the Ministry of Health is the most challenging, needing someone who is firm on purpose someone who is vigilant and robust.

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