Africa-Press – Botswana. The poor state of affairs at Botswana Qualification Authority (BQA) has warranted the Minister of Higher Education, Mr Prince Maele to constitute a board that will work towards resolving the issues.
During a meet and greet session with BQA staff, management and stakeholders in Gaborone on Monday, Mr Maele said his ministry was aware of the internal and external problems at BQA, having received several complaints from the organisation and its stakeholders.
“We have constituted a board, and the delay is because they are being vetted out but we are in the final stages,” he said, adding that there was no coherence at the institution.
Issues raised by the staff representative, Mr Thuto Bagwasi, included salary review, organisational review, contracts of employment, inconsistency of condition of service, payments of additional responsibility allowance, suspension of subject matter experts, suspension of services and ceasing benchmarking activities.
Mr Bagwasi said the suspension of the use of subject matter experts in BQA processes had contributed to lack of quality in the education and training providers.
“The quality of the National Credit Qualifications Framework has been compromised as a result of this suspension because it was done as cost saving measures and pushing the numbers over quality at the expense of prospective students,” said Mr Bagwasi, adding that the effects of this decision would be felt in years to come as BQA Act and Regulations have been contravened.
Furthermore, Mr Bagwasi said the Authority had stopped benchmarking activities with other regional and international peers, as a result leaving BQA isolated from the world especially on its core mandate. He also said BQA had been barred from participating in SADC activities as requested by member states.
This, he said had made the authority to lag behind and further isolated in developments regarding the National Qualifications Framework and quality assurance.
Responding to the staff’s grievances, Mr Maele said consistency was key on condition of service for staff welfare.
“The document for condition of service is sacred and need to be respected or we will have arbitrariness and biasness,” Mr Maele said.
He advised that acting positions should be filled if the employee was qualified and performed the task diligently as required. He said if the employee was able, they should be confirmed, or sent home if they were unable to perform their duties well.
He reminded BQA staff and management that their mandate spoke to the economic growth of this country, and that government relied on them. The minister said they needed to be able to assess and accredit the right people and organisations or they would find themselves oversubscribed and in trouble.
He said he had received complaints on corruption activities at BQA, and therefore advised and encouraged them to work on that. To address issues and clean up at BQA, minister Maele said they would give the board three months and thereafter give the minister a brief on what they had achieved; and subsequently give them another three months to attend to any outstanding issues.
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