CHEAP LABOUR? Botswana to legalise undocumented Zimbabweans- President Boko

Botswana’s President Duma Boko says he would regularise undocumented Zimbabweans so that they get required social amenities.

“They come in and are undocumented. Then their access to amenities is limited, if it is available at all, and what they then do is they live outside the law and they commit crimes – and this brings resentment.

“So what we need to do is to formalise, have a proper arrangement that recognises that people from Zimbabwe are already here.” President Boko said

He adds that a lot of workers from Zimbabwe perform tasks that the Botswana citizens find unattractive, jobs that would otherwise not get done hence he sees no conflict.

“In any and every construction site in Botswana the majority of people with those skills are from Zimbabwe, so we need to do a twin programme of allowing them to come in and we utilise the skills that they have and in the process of utilising these skills we also engage in some sort of skills transfer.

“We can’t stop people with skills from coming in when we don’t have the skills ourselves – we need to develop these skills and it takes time, so in the interregnum we need to have them come in properly, come in legally and be rewarded appropriately for the skills that they bring.

“We are facing a crisis of unemployment – for a population that’s 2.4 million when you have almost 30% of those people unemployed, it is a crisis. It’s a ticking time bomb.

“Twinned with his proposal of sharing skills brought in by Zimbabweans, the new president added that he wanted young people to engage in business “to become entrepreneurs, employ themselves and employ others,” he says.