24 Jan 2016

Botswana Meant Commission (BMC) last week resumed production at the Maun abbattoir after they managed to resolve the water shortage problem that hit the plant.

The halting of production at the plant resulted in a stand-off with farmers who had brought their cattle to the Matsaudi collection point later to be told by BMC to release them.

An agreement was later reached where BMC transported the cattle to Makalamabedi and bought them with the live weight price of P8/kg.

However, after restoring the water supply last week, the abattoir resumed slaughtering the first batch of the remaining cattle that were kept at the Makalamabedi quarantine. The cattle were kept for some days so that they could recover as they had stayed for days without food.

The plant manager, Mr Oabona Ramotshwara confirmed in an interview that they managed to put some measures in control to resume slaughtering. 

He said they started slaughtering on Wednesday where 110 cattle were slaughtered adding that they would be able to slaughter all the remaining cattle before end of this week. The Maun abattoir has the capacity to slaughter 120 cattle per day.

To address the water situation, he said Water Utilities Corporation came to their rescue and the abattoir also bowsed water from Chanoga to augment the little they got from the corporation.

Mr Ramotshwara explained that the abattoir needs 450 cubic litres on a daily basis but the corporation can only supply 150 cubic litres which is not enough.

He assured farmers that business would be back to normal as they had come up with some long term solutions to address issues of water shortage. The abattoir is in the process of digging a borehole at the plant and another one at the river.

The plant manager said at the moment, the plant would slaughter cattle three times in a week until they normalise the situation. Mr Ramotshwara revealed that their aim was to slaughter 600 cattle before they experience water crisis but managed to slaughter over 400.

He said their intention is to go back and collect the remaining cattle from Shorobe and the surrounding areas noting that after that they would need 300 cattle from Matsaudi area and then move on with their schedule.

The plant manager dismissed reports that the abattoir was closed adding that slaughtering was only disturbed by water shortage. Ends