Social welfare programmes monitored on regular basis- Tsogwane

Vice President Slumber Tsogwane says monitoring and evaluation of government programmes is guided and provided for by the National Monitoring and Evaluation System (NMES) of Botswana.

He said NMES lays out the foundation for processes of conducting Monitoring and Evaluation processes and methodologies. Therefore, the social welfare and empowerment programmes are monitored on a regular basis as provided for by the NMES, Tsogwane said.

He revealed that amongst these, are structures existing in local authorities which include, but are not limited to: Full Councils, District Extension Teams, Village Extension Teams and District Development Committees, where monthly reports, interventions and recommendations are effected.

According to Tsogwane there are at least 29 social welfare and empowerment programmes implemented across nine (9) ministries and these include a range of cash transfers, in-kind transfers, feeding programmes, fee waivers, public works programmes as espoused in the approved National Social Protection Framework (NSPF).

“The National Social Protection Framework mandates the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to coordinate the delivery of social protection programmes across sectors over and above their mandate of provision of social protection and empowerment programmes.

“Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) are an integral part of accountability in the delivery of projects, social welfare and economic empowerment programmes within Government,” he told Parliament.

MP for Gaborone Central Tumisang Mangwegape-Healey had asked the Vice President to enumerate [on] the number of social welfare and empowerment programmes currently offered by the Government and its associated

agencies/departments.

Tsogwane who is also leader of the house in Parliament and MP for Boteti West said Government has a long history of providing centrally funded and locally provided social welfare and empowerment programmes.

According to the vice president from the onset, one basic understanding of any social welfare programme, as an aspect of public policy, is to provide intervention measures through which individuals or social groups, who have limited means and capacity to satisfy their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, education, inter alia, are enabled to so do, and thus have dignity, through various carefully planned means for social entitlement, and the associated means-tests for eligibility as a beneficiary.

“Logically, a more sustainable solution to conditions of material deprivation, in turn, necessitates the mounting of economic empowerment programmes through which any eligible individuals or social groups are enabled to acquire the capacity to eke a living, by standing on their feet.

“Socio-economic empowerment programmes are, therefore, a means of building peoples' awareness, knowledge, capacities and opportunities for self-reliance towards the upliftment of their standards of living.”

The Vice President pointed out that such programmes may include targeted skills training for re-positioning oneself in the job market, schemes of entrepreneurial training towards establishing small, micro, and medium enterprises (SMMEs), or expanding such established enterprises, or seed funding by the government and its agencies, so as to facilitate individuals to engage in any kind of economic activities that are part of empowerment initiatives, such as in the agricultural or manufacturing sectors, he said adding that part of the spinoffs of empowerment programmes is job creation, as the beneficiaries expand their economic activities within their communities.