The newly appointed Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Stephan Schwarzfischer says his priorities are to kick-start the transformation process in a few weeks and come up with solutions to the challenged BPC multi-million Pula projects.
Addressing the media on his first day Schwarzfischer said that his agenda for the next 60 days was to fast track what the corporation was currently doing.
“I am here to take the coaching role with my experience of reorganizing entities and also to identify my successor before leaving the corporation in after five years,” said Schwarzfischer.
He is of the view that he is not going to look for mistakes that happened in the past but rather look for solutions. He added that he was not here to point fingers but to correct and improve processes internally.
“I have read a few articles from different media publications about BPC and all I need is a bit of time to find solutions to improve efficiency within BPC,” he said.
He further stated that he was aware that the corporation was financially challenged looking at the past set of financial results which were unsatisfactory.
Schwarzfischer is a qualified Engineer in Metallurgy and Materials which he obtained from the RhineWestphalia Technical University, Aachen. Upon completion of his Diploma whilst still pursuing his PhD he joined Kraftanlagen Heidelberg Inc. as a Project Manager; this was a company that was responsible for construction of nuclear, gas and thermal power plants.
Whilst employed by KPMG South Africa, Schwarzfischer had the opportunity to be involved in the restructuring exercise for Botswana Meat Commission (BMC). During that time he was able to experience working within a parastatal in the country.
BPC Chairman of Board of Directors Sebetlela Sebetlela stated that there were immediate plans to address the financial turnaround challenges such as uncollected debt, non-performing assets, adding that the corporation was technically bankrupt.
“The corporation embarks on a strategic planning process each year, as a ‘dip stick’ on its five-year rolling strategic plan,” said Sebetlela.
He further said that BPC had embarked on a transformation journey to realise its vision of being “a leading power utility in the region” by 2020, adding that hence a robust corporate strategy was necessary in the essence being Masa 2020 Transformation Strategy.
He stated that Masa 2020 is a five-year transformation strategy that seeks to turn around the status of the corporation by 2020. Sebetlela added that Masa 2020 transformation strategy has a vision to have transformed the corporation under the five-year strategic themes of financial turn around.
“We want to change and be innovative as well as benchmarking according to international standard,” he said.
