Inclusive Growth Central To Addressing Social Challenges

Achieving inclusive economic growth requires a multi-faceted approach, and when attained, it can bring about solutions to many of the country’s problems. Speaking during the official opening of Botswana Prison Service senior officers conference themed: Strengthening Leadership, Operational Discipline and Offender Rehabilitation in a Secure Humane Environment yesterday, President Advocate Duma Boko said it was government’s vision and priority to attain an inclusive economic growth. He said such a move would make Botswana Prisons Service’s job easier given that some offenders committed crimes because of economic hardships.To this end, he said the attainment of an inclusive economic growth would mean providing opportunities for people to make a decent living so as to keep them busy or engaged in order to frustrate crime.However, the President said that realising an inclusive economic growth remained elusive and had been always challenging to attain.

He said the reality of the country was that Botswana ranked among countries with glaring disparities in economic inclusion, alongside countries such as Namibia, noting that the disparity translated into an exclusion of a large proportion of the people from meaningful economic activity. In addition, President Boko said the economically marginalised were condemned, side-lined and exist on the margins of the mainstream economy, which led to an interconnected web of daily challenges for societies. Therefore, President Boko said some of them reacted to such a status quo by drifting into crime, while others try to shield themselves from the harsh reality by drifting into drugs and substance abuse, which in turn created a lot of social ills such as violence of all forms and disregard for the wellbeing of others.

He said society had collectively failed to mould such individuals, resulting in the Botswana Prison Service having to carry the burden of rehabilitating them into responsible citizens of the country – free from re-offending. For his part, acting Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Mr Augustine Nyatanga urged the nation to understand that the work of the prison service was restorative in nature as it sought to rehabilitate offenders and re-shape their character. Mr Nyatanga, who is also MP for Mahalapye East, commended President Boko for his message on leadership, saying it was timely and relevant to the work and responsibilities carried by senior officers at the Botswana Prison Service.

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He said leading effectively was a collective responsibility of all team members and that possession of great leadership skills would drive the prison service’s aspiration to realise and even exceed its objectives. He called on the senior officers to take to heart President Boko’s message and use it as guiding light for the organisation’s operations going forward. Mr Nyatanga also spoke of the need to attain more from little resources, explaining that with that in mind, the Botswana Prison Service would accomplish its objective of effectively transforming offenders placed under its care.

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