14 Jun 2017

Some residents of the six villages that make up the Lake Ngami Conservation Trust have resolved to sell one of the trust vehicles in order to settle the debt incurred after the fish market collapsed.

It was reported that the trust owed some creditors over P200 000 for waste management services for the month of April, and that one of the creditors had threatened to take legal action against the trust.

Residents made the resolution after they learnt that the trust was in a serious financial crisis, and that it has been unable to generate income as fishermen could not sell their stock due to the ban of dried fish export.

They agreed that selling of the vehicle was the only option, and that they hoped it would attract a price that would settle the debt.

The trust manager, Mr Galefele Maokeng had informed them that “the trust is faced with serious financial constraints and has failed to honour its obligations to providers of waste management services at the fish camps.”

He explained that the trust depended on monthly subscriptions made by fishermen. In addition, he revealed that the Office of the President, through the Poverty Eradication Unit, has came up with new guidelines on the utilisation of the trust funds sourced from the unit.

“Basically they have indicated that the funds cannot be used for anything else except construction of camps and payment of staff wages. This has obviously placed an extra burden on the trust’s ability to function, but it is also a challenge for us to be more financially prudent and creative,” he added.

To save the trust from further financial hemorrhage, Mr Maokeng said the board decided to terminate contracts with the waste management service providers at the beginning of May.

Furthermore, he noted that the board wrote to government explaining their situation and asked for support to settle the bill, but that their efforts were not successful.

The trust has also decided to restructure fishing camps in order to make them less costly to run after consultations with fishermen, government and that only three camps had been retained with reduced numbers of fishermen.

The camps retained are Thololamoro, Legotlhwana and Tswelenyane.

Mr Maokeng said the Legotlhwane camp had proven expensive to run due to the negligible number of subscription paying fishermen at the camp, noting that in future they might phase it out.

However, some residents proposed the closure of all camps to pave way for the construction of permanent structures.

Some said the camps should be retained because some fishermen were making ends meet.

Those who wanted the camps to be closed argued that it would save the trust to incur more debts in future.

They also said the closure would give the trust time to correct its mistakes and start afresh as no one anticipated the ban of dried fish exports.

It was also noted that the trust focused on fishing and forgot to look for other means of generating revenue to sustain its operations.

Some suggested that the trust should retain one camp and allow all fishermen to use it.

After lengthy discussions, an agreement was reached not to close the camps as they were benefiting some people from the affected villages.

For his part, Mr Maokeng supported the idea not to close, adding that closure would negatively affect fishermen.

He said the fishermen had made arrangements to pay for the provision of waste management services. ENDS