The Reatile Special Select Committee investigating the collapse of the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) and the beef industry has threatened to detain a witness accused of playing truant. "We are not happy with the way you conducted yourself trying to evade our summons. You switched off your phone, and we have come to doubt your credibility. We want to warn you that we have powers to detain you under contempt charges," Frank Ramden, who was chairing the proceedings of the committee yesterday, told Donald Ndlovu, a former BMC internal auditor.
After he failed to turn up after summons two weeks ago, Ndlovu switched off his phone, making it difficult for the committee's secretariat to communicate him.He later dropped a sick note at Parliament Buildings. But that conduct did not impress the committee at all. Without so much as a word of apology, Ndlovu stated that he had worked for BMC Francistown as a senior internal auditor from 2000 until he was transferred to Lobatse in 2005 as internal audit manager.His functions were, amongst others, to advise the management on controls and procedures and to compile a report to auditors. He said they undertook an exercise to audit BMC's London and Cape Town subsidiaries, which had been operating like separate entities.
