President Ian Khama has assembled a team of experts to investigate allegations of maladministration and financial embezzlement at the state-owned Botswana Meat Commission, says the Daily News.
“We want to know what went wrong, when it happened and whether it was sheer negligence or the move to crumble the BMC was deliberate,” Khama’s mouthpiece quotes him further.
What BMC needs is a fresh start.
If I had my way, I would re-appoint David Falepau as CEO, put in place a new board before going to the Ministry of Agriculture where I would also install a new Minister and a new Permanent Secretary.
The former BMC Chief Executive David Falepau was a good and competent man who unfortunately never stood a chance.
There is no doubt that even as he was busy trying to turn the commission around, some in the Board, who were, at least in theory, supposed to be his supervisors were already plotting his ouster.
He was sacked not because he was failing but because he clearly stood in the way of the board that wanted to get its hand on the kitty. By insisting on good corporate governance, Falepau had become a nuisance.
A few of the board members did not only want him out, they literally were eyeing his post ÔÇô for themselves.
Falepau’s ouster was a power grab and the nation should have started making noise the moment such an outstanding man was shown the door for crimes that were not of his making.
The Ministry has not been any helpful either.
Just like the Board, the Ministry of Agriculture is the evil author of all that has today gone bad with BMC.
It was not Falepau who caused Foot and Mouth.
It certainly could not have been him to cause the delisting of BMC from the European market.
All those were the responsibilities of the Ministry of Agriculture, especially the Department of Veterinary services.
While everybody was shocked by the arrangement that saw the board chairman volunteer to become an acting Chief executive, the Permanent Secretary, of all the people was the least concerned.
In fact, Dr Micus Chimbombi, a veterinary surgeon, we now learn, went on radio, waxing lyrical and beating his chest about how a certain Ian Thompson was not being paid to be a BMC acting Chief Executive.
It does not get any more naïve than that. To call this voluntary is to insult the intelligence of this nation.
In all this mess, Chimbombi has been a real revelation.
Surgeons, of whatever kind, we always have been made to believe are cool-headed people with steady hands and measured tones that inspire confidence, especially during difficult times such as those that BMC has brought on us.
But when it comes to BMC, they too seem to lose their senses. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Permanent Secretary had allowed himself to become a cheerleader of a club the true intentions of which we are still to fully know.┬á
Just how you have a statutory organization of BMC’s importance to the national economy run on a voluntary basis by a self-appointed latter day Samaritan, only a gullible soul like Chimbombi would know.
Thomson and his crew had pulled a most daring coup d’├®tat, silent and, of course, bloodless against not just BMC, but the entire nation. But for them to have enlisted a senior government official like a Permanent Secretary to swallow their shenanigans hook, line┬á and sinker as did Dr Chimbombi has been most spectacular indeed. It does not get much more demeaning than that.
But where was cabinet, or should we say the presidency at a time when the wheels were peeling off the BMC vehicle?
The BMC, it would look like, was all home alone.
There was no parental guidance to talk about. For all the duration of the saga, Minister De Graaf has been at sea.
The few times that he tried to get involved he came across as more confused than the rest of us outsiders.
It would seem like the only time he was really engaged was when he was signing off periodical tranches of money from government to keep the BMC afloat. In between, he was least concerned ÔÇô not by how the money was used and certainly not by improvements that his supposed patient was making.
And for that, President Khama does not deserve any sympathy.
By appointing such an ineffectual man to such a key ministry, President Khama is as guilty of the crimes at BMC as the same Board that saw nothing wrong appointing one of its own as a volunteer.
Government behaviour at BMC has stretched public confidence to the limit.
And we may yet see the outcome of such despicable incompetence.
There is no doubt that BMC needs money.
There is also no doubt that under its present form, BMC will not survive.
But money alone is not going to save money.
What the commission needs is leadership.
And as a nation, leadership is one commodity we have in very acute short supply.
Which is why to save BMC, this week President Khama appointed a three-man panel of experts to report to cabinet every two weeks.
Surprise, surprise, the panel consists of De Graaf and Dr Chimbombi, the same guys under whose watch BMC got to where it is today.
If this is not rewarding incompetence, then I do not know what is.
