BCL housing offered to former employees
Mompati Tlhankane | Tuesday December 20, 2022 06:00
By so doing government will also dispose of the remaining houses by public auction.
Following the placement of the BCL Group of Companies, including BCL Limited, BCL Investments, and Tati Nickel Mining Company, under provisional liquidation by the High Court of Botswana, the Government of Botswana decided to rent company houses for the former employees of the companies. At the time of taking the decision, there were 1,187 BCL housing units occupied by the former employees of BCL Limited with an average monthly rental cost of P2.3 million.
Responding to a question in Parliament on Friday, Minister of Minerals and Energy, Lefoko Moagi revealed that the decision to now offer houses to the former and current employees of BCL was taken as per government's instruction of June 23. “The late Trevor Glaum, NO commenced a valuation process to facilitate, each house being accorded a reserve price.
His untimely passing resulted in a vacancy, which was eventually filled by Darusha Moodliar, VO who was appointed as Provisional Liquidator, thus not having the full powers of a liquidator.
Once clothed with appropriate authority, Moodliar, WO proceeded with the valuation process,” Moagi disclosed. He said to date occupants have not yet received offers but the liquidator has solicited further instructions from government concerning the approval of third-party service providers in the form of a Property Valuer, Quantity Surveyor, and Town Planner.
He added that this was necessitated by the fact that the scoping exercise discovered that what is on the ground has very little resemblance to what is on the approved DSM General Plans. “Some plots will have to be resurveyed to align the plot boundaries and to ensure that each building is within a geographically recognised plot.
Alternatively, there is a proposal that some government departments should acquire some of the residential properties,” he further indicated. Moagi was responding to a question from Selebi-Phikwe West legislator, Dithapelo Keorapetse who had asked about, amongst others, the situation on the state of houses and housing leases for former BCL employees.
Moagi last year, when updating Parliament on the BCL Group liquidation and the leasing arrangement of houses in Selebi-Phikwe by the Government of Botswana for former employees of BCL Limited, said the decision to pay rent on behalf of former Mine employees was made to cushion the negative impact on the former employees following the closure of the BCL Group mines.
He also said the intention was to give the families occupying the BCL houses time to make alternate arrangements for accommodation and also reduce the risk of vandalism to the houses which could negatively impact the BCL estate if the houses were otherwise left vacant. Moagi said they also wanted to avert a potential mass exodus from Selebi-Phikwe Township which could paralyse the economy of the town. Besides housing, Moagi also told Parliament that government has paid a sum of P163.4 million as terminal benefits to over 6,000 ex-BCL employees bringing the total amount disbursed from the consolidated fund towards liquidation activities to P1.9 billion.
He said funding from government was used mainly for care and maintenance expenses, insurance, VAT payments, labour costs, technical costs (general and project), Botswana Power Corporation debt, Water Utilities Corporation debt, hospital running costs, housing maintenance and expenditure, and professional and technical services consultancy fees.