Members of a sub-committee appointed by Bulawayo Provincial Affairs Minister Judith Ncube to look into the operations of the CSC discovered, before the reopening, that Boustead Beef had cannibalised some electrical motors from the Canning plant and fitted them as spares for the Bulawayo abattoir refrigeration plant.
Two pumps for the boiler were removed and taken to the CSC abattoir where they were repainted and fitted “as newly imported spares”.
Another lie fed to Chiwenga was that Boustead Beef planned to increase slaughter to 1 500 cattle a day because the Bulawayo plant, according to the company that supplied it, could only slaughter a maximum of 800 cattle a day.
Boustead Beef did not have any control over the other CSC abattoirs.
The closure of the plant came just weeks after marketing manager Isaiah Machingura said the company was ready to resume beef exports this quarter.
Workers said this was another lie because the abattoir was only carrying out service slaughters and has been killing an average of 15 cattle a day.
A source said only one cold room out of 10 was working yet 6 out of 10 were working before Boustead took over.
Chiwenga was told at the reopening that the CSC plant had been closed for 22 years, which was another lie.
A worker said the plant was working all along. It was the refrigeration that was not working and it was not working on the day that the Vice-President reopened the plant.
“We decommissioned the plant because of the low capacity utilisation. Our output was not enough to meet the power costs and there were also the power outages. We had to bring a smaller plant from Mutare to continue our scaled down operations. This was way before Boustead Beef came onto the scene. So the plant was working, and in my opinion the plant that the VP was asked to commission is worse off than it was when we decommissioned it,” the worker said.
It remains unclear why Boustead Beef has been allowed to stay at the Bulawayo plant up to now despite its litany of lies and failures.
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