Bia Employers’ Forum – March 6, 2008

The Botswana Institute of Accountants held the first ever employers’ forum which was officially opened by the BIA President, Priya Iyer who explained that the main objective of the forum was to explain and explore ways of partnering with employers, its stakeholders, to achieve the objective of ensuring the highest possible quality of corporate financial reporting and accountability through compliance with applicable standards and codes.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Botswana Institute of Accountants, Duncan Majinda explained that compliance with these standards improved transparency and upheld public confidence in the accountants and accounting profession at large.

He reiterated that employers also had an essential role to play, as the ultimate consumers of our products and services, by ‘’letting us know their expectations from us so that we could serve them better’’.

The presentation showcased what the Botswana Institute of Accountants had on offer and also opened up avenues for employers to get the maximum benefits from the Institute. The breakfast session specifically targeted the Chief Executives or their Deputies because of their role as drivers of policy change and Human Resource Directors because of their role in recruitment and development of human capital in their organisations. Financial Accountants had been deliberately left out as BIA believed that they were the people that the Institute was monitoring and regulating and consequently there could be room for conflict of interest and also because we believed that they knew what was expected of them even though they didn’t always implement that.

Duncan Majinda further explained the role of the Botswana Institute of Accountants as the umbrella professional Accountancy body in Botswana. Its major roles are, amongst others, the regulation of the profession to ensure high standards of professionalism, enforce the code of ethics that govern accountants in the country, protect the public interest by providing a high quality of service which the public can trust and have confidence in and to enhance, enforce and monitor members’ continuing professional development in order to give them the technical support they require for their day to day work requirements.

He emphasized that the most important role of the BIA, is protection of public interest which he explained in four different schools of thoughts namely utilitarianism, democracy, pareto optimality and practical approach.

He further went on to explain the different levels of membership categories and what each could do at that level. He explained to employers what role they could play in the process, such as employing only accountants who are registered with the BIA, assist employees achieve the required CPD Credits by paying for their costs and also ask for confirmation of renewal of membership every year from BIA.

The impact of this forum is already being felt as we have recently seen advertisements for accounting jobs specifying that the applicants should be members of BIA.

The forum was attended by employers from across industries such as Insurance, Construction Banks and Recruitment agencies to name but a few.

The forum was officially closed by the BIA Treasurer, Mr Kalyanaram Vijay, who explained that The Institute intended to hold more of these forums in the future to educate employers on what they should expect from accountants and also about the differences between the levels or categories of members of the Institute. He thanked the employers for attending and expressed his belief that they would benefit from these initiatives.

Botswana Institute of Accountants
Plot 50676, Block B, Second Floor
Fairgrounds Office Park
Private Bag 0021,
Gaborone, Botswana
Phone: +267 397 2992
Fax: +267 397 2982
Email: bia@bia.org.bw

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