Government will construct a protection zone from North East district to Ngamiland until Namibian boarder to fight the spread of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) as well as revive and protect beef and livestock industry.

Submitting before Parliamentary Select Committee that enquires in the collapse of Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) and the beef industry in general on July 18, Minister of Agriculture Mr Christiaan De Graaff said the protection zone is meant to separate green zones from red zone.

Though not committing himself to the timeframe, Minister De Graaff said the protection zone will also go through some areas of Okavango Delta separating red zones from green zones before it reaches Namibian boarder fence with Botswana.

He also said government is in the process of applying that part of the Nata area, which has been without FMD for a longer time, be declared a green zone.

In a bid to continue fighting FMD, he said government assisted Zimbabwe to fight FMD by vaccinating 220 000 cattle in a radius area of 40 kilometres within Zimbabwe.

Minister De Graaff submitted that even though government was doing all it can to fight the disease and protect the beef market, cattle farmers are also to blame because they do not take responsibility to vaccinate their animals.

He said it was discovered that about 12 per cent of cattle in Botswana are never vaccinated as if such animals do not have owners adding that the most important thing is to vaccinate animals 100 per cent against the virus.

He also said his ministry had in the past, engaged prison inmates in the maintenance of FMD cordon fences as another way of protecting and containing the spread of the disease in the Ngamiland infested area.

He explained that government injected a lot of money into BMC to bail it out from its financial crisis and that some of the injections were direct loans which the BMC has started repaying.

He said BMC’s challenges are from way back before he was appointed a minister in 2007 including the value of animals that were slaughtered at the abattoir exacerbated by current stringent requirements by European Union (EU).

He submitted that at some point, BMC engaged GRM consultancy from Australia to help turn around its fortunes for the better through put and run in full capacity but to no avail.

He also submitted that the BMC UK subsidiary holding was being run like a family affairs by just distributing the meat and not marketing arm for the abattoir.

He said his feeling at that time was that UK holdings, as a marketing arm of the abattoir should run its business from the Lobatse BMC, which was the headquarters. The subsidiary has long been closed because its operational costs were ‘very’ high.

He said initially, he was not aware that BMC has been experiencing loses until 2009 when the then Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Motshudi Raborokgwe informed him that the national abattoir was in financial crisis.

He said within a short period of time, Dr Raborokgwe, whom he appointed as CEO because he was experienced and a local who knew BMC problems well, resigned his position and one board member Mr Ian Thompson opted to serve as CEO without being paid.

He said he then appointed Mr Thompson to the position of CEO after getting the advice from other board members and even took the matter to Cabinet for approval whist still waiting for a substantive CEO to be appointed.

He said Dr David Falepau was appointed the next CEO and it was under his leadership that a lot of things went wrong because he was not hands-on.

He submitted that at some stage, Dr Falepau requested for millions of Pula from Government to turn around the fortunes of the ailing commission but failed to account for the monies.

He said the reasons to fire him from his position was that he was under performing and at some stage when BMC was de-listed from the EU market, he summoned him to his office and advised him that he was thrown in the deep end of the pool because of the problem.

Minister De Graaff said immediately after the meeting whilst BMC was still in the red, Dr Falepau and his board members increased cattle prices by 19 percent, something that was wrong more-so that the country was in the recession period.

He refuted allegations that some board members had access to him adding that whenever he received a report from any board member, and that he had intervene and went beyond his mandate by calling meetings in a bid to safe the national abattoir from problems that were bedeviling it. Minister De Graaff will appear again on July 29 for further submissions. ENDS