Medswana re-instated fired executive

Brian Benza
Staff Writer | Friday September 17, 2010 00:00

 

Mmegi reported two weeks ago that Medswana had fired two senior executives on allegations that they connived to prejudice the company of hundreds of thousands of pula through shady parallel transactions and business arrangements.

It has now surfaced that one of the two executives was re-engaged this week, albeit in a lower position, after assisting with investigations and pledging to reimburse the company the money it lost due to the illegal transactions.

In an interview this week, the Acting General Manager of Medswana, Piet Le Grange, confirmed the re-engagement of the executive on a temporary basis until end of October.

'From the beginning, he came clean with his wrongdoing and has even offered to pay back the money that the company lost through their dealings,' Le Grange said. 'So when he approached us again, we decided to re-employ him but not at the senior management level that he was in before but as an ordinary practising pharmacist.

'For now we have given him a short-term contract until end of October for us to rebuild a relationship after which we hope to employ him on a permanent basis.'

While Le Grange said the company had pardoned the executive and smoked the peace pipe with him, it appears that Medswana desperately needs his services because the market is reportedly in a short supply of pharmacists with knowledge and experience in wholesale distribution.

After the departure of the two executives late last month, the company was left with only one pharmacist with such experience. Le Grange admits that while the market is awash with pharmacists with retail experience, those with wholesale experience are hard to come by. 

Medswana is Botswana's largest distributor of pharmaceutical, surgical and related products to pharmacies, private doctors, dentists, clinics, hospitals and the government. The two executives were fired late last month after they were discovered to have formed a private parallel import company for drugs and pharmaceuticals in direct competition with their employer. They were also accused of selling products from the parallel import company to Medswana at inflated prices with mark-ups of up to 30 percent.

Although Le Grange could not say exactly how much Medswana had lost in this manner, inside sources at the company said initial estimates put the figure at over P250,000.

Apart from the import company, the two executives were also accused of opening a retail pharmacy where they sold products they purchased from Medswana at discounted prices.

'The two were also accused of unethical business practices after it was discovered that they were running a pharmacy they stocked with supplies bought from Medswana at cheap prices,' Le Grange said.

In a letter dated 25 August 2010, Medswana chairman Fred Wypkema warned suppliers that the two were no longer a part of Medswana and that there was no relationship or partnership between Medswana and the private company formed by the two executives.Formed in 1995, Medswana has a large distribution network that has evolved over time from a standard wholesale distribution model to the current system that has batch tracking capability.

Medswana currently distributes products for all the major multinationals and distributes products for around 150 companies.

Two years ago, the company formed a buying group of pharmacies called the MedPharm Group, which has acted as another platform that suppliers can use to launch and distribute their products in the Botswana market.This group currently consists of 45 of Botswana's biggest pharmacies.