Board contributed to BMC collapse

ISAIAH MOREWAGAE
Staff Writer | Thursday March 21, 2013 00:00

The former acting chief executive officer (CEO) who was also the general manager (Marketing) Sonny Molapisi told the committee that the parastatal had proposed to lease the Sir Seretse Khama ostrich abattoir for the local market.Molapisi said the leasing of the facility was meant to enable local butcheries to access BMC products, which they could not do under the regulations governing the BMC.

He said presently butchery owners cannot buy directly from BMC because only wholesalers are allowed to buy in bulk.Molapisi said in one of the board meetings, the proposal to lease the abattoir was approved, but in the subsequent one the board somersaulted on their earlier decision.

BMC board member J.J. van der Merwe vehemently opposed the leasing of the abattoir in preference of a company called Quality Meat. He told the committee that it later emerged that van der Merwe had some interests in the company, which subsquently won the lease.Molapisi also painted a disturbing picture of BMC management and the BMC board. He told the committee that on numerous occasions, the board ignored management's advice on certain decisions, which contributed to BMC's downfall. He highlighted the continued engagement of the GMR Consultants as one of the decisions that drained BMC. He said GMR was engaged in good faith to help the BMC turn its fortunes around.

After some stage it became apparent that GMR Consultants were not doing anything extraordinary, hence management proposed that at the end of their two-year contract, it should not be renewed, he said. However, Molapisi said the management ignored their advice and went ahead to renew GMR Consultants' contract.

Molapisi revealed that on average, BMC was paying about P1 million monthly to GMR Consultants. He admitted that GMR Consultants did help them with some new strategy aimed at turning BMC fortunes around.Another factor that Molapisi said might have contributed to BMC demise was the under pricing of beef by its London-based subsidiary. He told the committee that they were shocked to learn after the GMR study revealed that the London subsidiary had been under pricing the Botswana beef, which led to loss of revenue by BMC.

'We had been living under the belief that prices we were getting from the London office were the best for our beef and were shocked by this revelation,' Molapisi said.Asked what the BMC did after the revelations, Molapisi said the management took a decision to restructure the London office by relieving some of the top management of their duties. He was not sure whether the management renegotiated beef prices with the London based customers because when he left BMC in 2011 it was yet to be done. 'The London office was at times acting like a head office while the real head office was here in Botswana, Lobatse BMC,' Molapisi added.

Molapisi noted that the London office's behaviour was largely due to the fact that BMC was losing staff at an alarming rate. Molapisi said at times the CEO at the head office had to learn the ropes from the London-based one because it does not have a high staff turnover as compared to the Botswana office.He said this led to the head office being more dependent on London, hence they took everything the London office said as credible.At the end of the hearing, Chairperson of the Committee Mephato Reatile told Molapisi that he would be called again because the committee might need supplementary information from him.