Botswana: O ipoka ka eng? Loosely translated: what makes you proud of yourself? ‘The answer is You make YOU shine. Many people do not realise just how amazing they truly are. Your best way to shine is to believe you have the right too.’
The Chief of Staff, Boyce Sebetela, yesterday echoed the message as he unpacked the Mindset Change presentation during the Botswana Prison Service’s first edition of the Non-Uniformed Staff Conference in Palapye yesterday.
Sebetela reminded the conference participants that it starts with an individual for an organisation and, subsequently, the country to prosper and attain its intended goal. He said it is thus critical that an individual effort is added up to the team members to appreciate and embrace a well package production and sustained excellence.
“You are the building block tasked with a duty to contribute to the team so that the Prison Service could sore like an eagle,” he said.
The Chief of Staff stated that through its national principles, cultural values, and unity, Botho and Boipelego, Botswana, has been on the right track, making it even simpler to achieve prosperity for all by the year 2036.
“Our culture is full of business mentality, and we have been doing that for a long time; we just need to shift our mindsets. Everything is possible, and the time is now.”
He implored the participants to introspect, embrace time management cleanliness and always be ready to serve. He called on the participants to never give up and always have a ‘feel good factor’.
On giving some welcome remarks, the Commissioner of Prisons – Commissioner Dinah Marathe the success of the Prison Service is dependent on the collective efforts, including both the uniformed and non-uniformed staff.
She said the purpose of the Conference is to nurture a high performance culture by creating a platform where the participants can deliberate and discuss issues affecting their daily performance.
Commissioner Marathe indicated that after the President’s recent launch of the National Mindset Change Campaign, which calls for the nation to shift and do things differently, the Prison Service was compelled to radically shift and change ‘how we view ourselves, our core workers, our clients, customers, our employer and the world around us.’
“This conference is, therefore, one of the initiatives in which we seek to exert change in the way we have been doing things to come up with new initiatives which will take our organisation and the country forward,” she said.
The two-day programme held under the theme; “Building a High Performance Culture: Repositioning, Re-Aligning and Re-engineering the Prison Service to achieve its mandate, attracted a total of 110 members of Civilian Staff from the Prisons installations across the country and the Ministry of Defence and Security Headquarters.
The Minister of Defence and Security, Thomas Kagiso Mmusi, is expected to open the Conference tomorrow officially.