18 Jul 2023

Government continues to prioritise maintenance of cordon fences.

 Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Mr Molebatsi Molebatsi said for this financial year at least P25 million was earmarked for rehabilitation of priority cordon fences including border cordon fences. 

  Mr  Molebatsi told Parliament that urgent maintenance of cordon fences was neccesitated by incidences of straying cattle into infected areas, which he said  remained a serious challenge. 

    However, the assistant minister said he was not aware of any cattle found in the no-man’s land between Botswana and Namibia in June this year.

Answering a question from Ngami Member of Parliament, Mr Caterpillar Hikuama on Friday, Mr Molebatsi said he was only aware of 27 cattle that were killed by his ministry at Dobe Border Gate after they were handed to the Department of Veterinary Services by the Namibia Directorate of Veterinary Services after being found inland of Namibia having traversed that country’s CBPP (lung disease) and FMD vaccination zones.

He said all except two cattle were not identified with BAITS tags and some did not have owner’s brand marks.

 Mr Molebatsi said all the cattle had not been vaccinated for FMD for the last two years and that the animals were deemed high risk and killed.

He said the reasoning for killing animals that strayed into infected areas instead of returning them to owners was to prevent reintroduction of diseases such as FMD and dreadful lung diseases.

The assistant minister said the current compensation for cattle killed after straying into infected zones or countries was P700. 

He added that movement control remained integral to the control of animal diseases.

He said government encouraged farmers to go back to the old tradition of herding livestock to protect them from theft, straying and predators.

He added that farmers were also encouraged to improve management of their livestock, including by regularly kraaling them at night and providing them with adequate water and supplementing with minerals in order to lure them back to kraals.

Mr Hikuama had asked the minister to confirm if it was true that in the month of June 2023 government killed some cattle found in the no-man’s land between Botswana and Namibia’s border which allegedly belonged to farmers in Ngami constituency.

He wanted to know the number of cattle killed, their estimate value in terms of money and reasons for destruction of the cattle instead of taking them back to their rightful owners.

Mr Hikuama also asked for the compensation rate given or to be given the owners and measures put in place to prevent the reoccurrence of the incident.ENDS