Falepau prophesised death of BMC

The former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Botswana Meat Commission, Dr David Falepau has said that he was blocked from making the meat commission a success. Falepau who earned about P40 000 monthly during his stay at BMC pocketed P1.9million as benefit package when he was fired two years back.

The BMC Parliamentary Select Committee listened to Falepau’s testimony through video conferencing and he told the Mephato Reatile-led committee that, “I did not see my dismissal coming but I knew some people were determined to spoil my stay there. To this day I do not get why the Minister of Agriculture fired me barely two years into my position.”

When the Minister of Agriculture, Christian de Graaff appointed Falepau, the new CEO was praised as being the Messiah BMC had been waiting for. He said he had wanted to create annual operating plans that will guide the BMC whose cost of production was close to 20 percent higher than it was supposed to be. “I had great plans for BMC but was never allowed to execute them,” he said.

The former CEO said he had on several occasions advised against Export Parity Price increase which he said was benchmarked from South Africa but the BMC board discarded his advice. “I had predicted that, the way things were done, BMC would run a deficit of over P200 million by March 2011 but since the board and management had their own disagreements, my predictions were ignored.”

Mephato Reatile, the committee chairperson put it to Falepau that de Graaff had testified that he (Falepau) allowed the commodity price increase even though European Union lost interest in BMC meat, to which Falepau said he did not but had to watch it happen as he feared losing his job. When de Graaff appeared before the committee he said Falepau was incompetent.