Gaborone: Five years without an abattoir

| Friday June 14, 2013 00:00

 

Butchery owners in Gaborone are complaining that lack of abattoirs in the city has contributed to the sale of unhealthy beef, unreliable veterinary officers and a potentially dangerous reliance on substandard village slaughter slabs.Following unconfirmed reports that the Gaborone City Council (GCC) was equally concerned about the slaughtering of cattle at some abattoirs outside of Gaborone, local butchery owners and farmers have put the blame on GCC for failing them five years ago when the Gaborone abattoir was closed down.

The Managing Director of Lobame Meat Centre, Murray Dipate, says the old council abattoir was shut down by the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) because of its incapacitated holding kraals and unsustainable sewerage system that was prone to blockages at peak hours of slaughtering. Dipate alleges that afterwards, a tender to run an ostrich abattoir was issued to Quality Meat, a butchery and therefore a competitor.   In 2012, butcheries requested MoA to run the ostrich abattoir as a subsidiary of Botswana Meat Commission or alternatively allow GCC to operate it so as to avoid conflict between competing butchery owners, but to no avail. Dipate and other butchery owners ended up slaughtering their cattle at Mochudi, Molepolole and Lobatse. Butchery owners in Tlokweng, Ramotswa, Molepolole, Thamaga and other surrounding areas mostly slaughter in Mochudi while a few go to Molepolole.

'Now I am slaughtering at Mochudi because of the competition,' he says. 'Quality Meat does not give me good service; they delay my business a lot.' According to Dipate, the new laws say any meat transported beyond a four-kilometre radius, which obviously includes out of town abattoirs, should be in a refrigerated truck.

The owner of Gantsi Beef, Rus Din, also says butchery owners are struggling and that the business of slaughtering cattle at villages compromises a lot of hygiene. Din says he currently slaughters in Mochudi, which is the only solution he has at the moment. However, he cannot slaughter the right quantities since the facilities are small.Two years ago, the Ministry of Agriculture was to introduce a setup where ostriches and cattle would be slaughtered on interchanging weeks at the ostrich abattoir so as to curb the issue of competition and bias, he says.

'They have not helped us with any such thing, as we speak,' says Din. 'It's costly because I cannot go to Mochudi and slaughter one beast if I want to and the hygiene at these slaughter slabs is not up to standard.' According to Din, the veterinarian is never readily available since he also services other villages such as Ramotswa and Molepoplole. This contributes to carcasses staying for too long un-refrigerated while waiting for the vet.  Dipate says an effort to get intervention is a cat and mouse game between the ministry and the city council.

'The ministry does not care,' he says. 'They say they are just policymakers and GCC should be the one to provide the municipal abattoir. On the other hand, GCC says it does not have the P35 million to build it.' MoA once gave butcheries an option of slaughtering at the BMC, but Dipate says it would have been too costly and disadvantageous to their profit oriented businesses.

He continues: 'Slaughtering at the BMC would be a rip-off because they do not slaughter for you but strictly buy and sell you back your carcass at a higher price! It's absolute nonsense because it now encourages people to slaughter under trees and at night, which is wrong again. The capital city of Gaborone has no abattoir, just imagine! And they do not want to give us the old GCC abattoir!'

The Mayor of Gaborone Haskins Nkaigwa says he is fully aware of this situation and has asked MoA to open the abattoir so that the people of Gaborone may know what they are eating and where it comes from.'We wanted to open the old abattoir but the government has refused,' says the Mayor. 'They said the area is now an industrial site and we should find new land for the abattoir, which is now a costly mission while the health of many people is being compromised.'

Mayor Nkaigwa is hoping that by the end of the year, the terms and conditions for a new abattoir will be ready since they have found a plot. He says the abattoir will be operated as a public-private partnership to avoid issues of favouritism but also to make the enterprise competitive enough in service delivery.

The Mayor acknowledges that GCC cannot monitor the beef and its transportations effectively under existing circumstances, something the council finds seriously disturbing.'I remember that before I became Mayor, we used to see people sneaking in meat at night,' he says. 'Right now we do spot checks and test meat, but we do not even know where the meat we are inspecting comes from. We just don't have the capacity to monitor.'