22 Jan 2014

The chairperson of Hainaveld Farmers Association, Mr Philip Wright has called on the Ngamiland community to join hands and deal with economic hardships that are plaguing the district.

He said major issues such as loss of beef market due to livestock disease outbreaks needed collective responsibility.

He said this when commenting on a presentation made by the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) chief executive officer, Dr Akolang Tombale, who had gone to Maun to brief the community on developments at his institution.

Mr Wright said government was aware that Ngamiland continued to experience re-occurrence of foot and mouth disease and was doing a lot to bring the situation under control.  What remained was for the community to play its part.

He said problems bedeviling the community such as loss of beef market due to the recurrence of animal diseases, loss of livestock due to drought, increasing debt problems for the local people and inconsistence of cattle prices at Botswana Meat Commission (BMC), could all be addressed effectively if the community was united in purpose.

The greatest undoing of the community, he said, was that currently everyone was working in isolation, which made it difficult to find a working solution. Mr Wright said it was past pointing fingers at each other and everyone needed to share his or her to help improve the situation.

“I believe if we could stand up and face the battle squarely, we would manage to control and contain Foot and Mouth disease outbreak,” he said.

He also called on farmers and the community at large to change their mindset and work closely with BMC, and department of Veterinary Services. The chairperson also appealed to BMC officials to inform them well in time when they were ready to buy cattle so that farmers could be prepared. He said at times farmers were running business at a loss because they sold cattle of low value.

Mr Wright also suggested that Ngamiland community should have its own board which could put farmers’ interest at heart. However, some farmers complained about what they termed unequal treatment by BMC, in that the meat commission was using different price lists to buy cattle. They said their animals fell in the lower price range.  They therefore called on uniform pricing by BMC.

The farmers also raised concern that in other areas, BMC took care of transportation costs while in Ngamiland farmers had to shoulder the burden.

Farmers also asked the government to look for a permanent solution to livestock diseases in the area noting that the district has suffered from a series of livestock diseases such as Foot and Mouth (FMD) since 2007. They said some farmers could not to repay loans because they could not sell their cattle.

The farmers also request the government to revive the quarantine system saying BMC had all along survived on the system. For his part the general manager for Maun abattoir, Mr Mothobi Mothobi noted that they would review the transport arrangement for live trade.
However for slaughtering, individuals should bear the cost of transportation as it is the case in other areas, he said. ENDS