Nkopane's family filed a claim for compensation with the BPC; but the corporation's insurers said they could only settle the matter for P10, 000, which the family did not accept as they considered it too little as compensation for someone rendered permanently disabled.
After the BPC remained recalciltrant, the family appealed to the Ombudsman who pleaded with the BPC to settle the matter out of its social responsibility programme.
In one letter to the BPC, the Ombudsman asked for a breakdown of how the figure of P10, 000 was arrived at. The Ombudsman noted that relevant legislation holds the BPC in strict liability for such occurrences.
But since several years have elapsed since the incident, the Ombudsman says it is too late to contemplate litigation.
When interviewed last March, BPC Chief Executive Officer John Kaluzi said the public utility was going to revisit the matter and hold discussions with the family.
But Nkopane's elder sister Kedibonye Ramelamu says the family has not heard from the BPC in a long time. She says even as her brother was lying at Princess Marina for an extended length of time, no BPC official came to visit.
Ramelamu says she is an unemployed mother, who is struggling to feed her six children and her disabled brother. She believes the BPC is treating them shabbily because they are poor:
"They know that we do not have the money to take them to court," she says, adding that there is not much the family could have done for Nkopane with P10, 000. Before the accident, her younger brother was self-supporting, she says.
Meanwhile, BPC spokeswoman Tlhomamiso Selato says the corporation is scheduled to hold a meeting next week at which all cases of people injured by their installations will be reviewed. Several such cases are still pending
When asked specifically about the Nkopane case, Selato said the BPC should be given time to attend to all the cases.
In other issues, the BPC spokeswoman says Botswana will not experience a power outage, even if employees of Eskom, the South African power utility that supplies much of Botswana's electricity, go on strike next week as they have threatened.
Selato says BPC has been in regular contact with Eskom officials, who have assured them that power supply to Botswana will not be disrupted even if Eskom employees go on strike.
Eskom employees have threatened to go on strike on July 4 unless the state-owned utility meets their 12 percent wage demand.
