Botswana cattle deal boosts CSC capacity

cattle begins to bear fruit, an official said last week.
The Botswana government engaged the CSC to assist in slaughtering cattle infected with foot and mouth to stop the disease from spreading especially from the Zone VI area, which is along the border with Zimbabwe.
This followed the realisation that its own meat processor, Botswana Meat Commission, did not have the capacity to process about 45 000 beasts from the affected area within a four-month period.
Delays in carrying out the culling programme would have resulted in the spread of the disease to neighbouring areas, namely Zone VIII or Serowe, Zone IX, (Palapye), Zone V (Boteti and Zone 111C (Masunga).
The CSC had closed its three abattoirs at the height of the hyperinflationary period, which the country experienced a couple of years ago.
A CSC official said that the company had started hiring new workers to cope with the workload.
“The Bulawayo abattoir has managed to recruit 150 workers on top of the other staff complement since the implementation of the Botswana deal,” he said.
“We have clocked 100 percent capacity utilisation as we are currently slaughtering 1 000 cattle a day. The deal is also boosting the company’s capacity to reopen its other abattoirs,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
He said the Botswana deal would enable the CSC to repair all its abattoirs.
CSC is paying Botswana a flat rate of 2 000 pula per beast, in addition to transport costs.
CSC’s state-of-the-art Bulawayo abattoir is probably the best slaughtering plant in sub-Sahara Africa.
Before the company ran into problems, its sophisticated and integrated facilities which included abattoirs in Chinhoyi, Marondera and Masvingo had a slaughter capacity of up to 600 000 cattle per year. – New Ziana.