17 Jun 2019

LUCARA Botswana does not have any intentions of taking over Letlhakane abattoir and as such it will remain a council property.

Karowe general manager Mr Johane Mchive said this during a sub-council session held in Letlhakane recently.

He said the aim was to assist establish an efficient operating model that could go beyond slaughtering only through expansion of services such as processing of products like mincemeat, beef canning and biltong production.

Mr Mchive noted that the abattoir had experienced challenges during re-opening. He stated that due to budgetary constraints, council had not been able to operate the facility optimally as throughput also was too low.

He indicated that complaints had been raised concerning performance of the abattoir and frequent closures., noting that the council made an undertaking to outsource the facility to a private operator.

He stated that way forward on the matter included where council continued funding the operations, but the option could not be considered given that CDC had resolved to outsource all its abattoirs.

Another scenario, he said council could outsource the facility to a private operator, who would take full control of the facility in managing and operating it.

He indicated there was also the hybrid scenario where council, community and Lucara could agree to engage a transaction advisor, who would undertake studies to find the best model to be used to run the abattoir.

He said both Lucara, and council could fund the transaction advisor and sit in an interim board that would deliberate on the findings of the study and adopt the best model to use to outsource.

The manager indicated that Karowe as a diamond producer did not have any interests in operating any other business other than mining and did not have any plans to lose its mining engineers to operate an abattoir.

Mr Mchive further indicated that the mini-stadium project budget had been secured. He explained that addition of the school to the project led to implementation delays as the stadium project was expected to kick-start in 2019.

Boteti councilors’ had expressed fears that LUCARA wanted to take over the abattoir. Specially elected councilor Baobonye Loeto said he did not support outsourcing of the abattoir nor its privatization.

Councilor Loeto said they needed to understand how the project would benefit the community, raising fears that it might only benefit council. He said they wanted to understand who would assume ownership of the abattoir after privatisation, saying a deal had to be made between LUCARA and community members in exclusion of the council.

Councilor Boitumelo Kgosi had earlier on indicated that there were allegations that some of Karowe mine employees had plans to take over the abattoir and operate it as their private business.

Councilor Aaron Engliton pleaded with the councilors to work cooperatively towards making the abattoir profitable and cllr Elijah Motsamai suggested that a task team that could work on privatisation of the abattoir should be appointed comprising farmers associations and business community.

In response Mr Mchive said all stakeholders must come on board on discussions regarding privatization of the abattoir, saying agencies like Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) could be brought in for advisory role. ENDs