By Business reporter
MINISTER of State for Masvingo Provincial Affairs, Ezra Chadzamira is reportedly pushing for the termination of the Cold Storage Commission (CSC) Boustead Beef deal after the investor, has seemingly failed to revive the company, Harare Post can report.
The investor was given the concession more than a year ago.
According to a source, Minister Chadzamira wants Masvingo CSC to pull out of the venture to allow the province to hunt for a more serious investor who can revive CSC.
A source who spoke to this publication, said that Minister Chadzamira wrote to Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement Rtd Air Chief Marshall Perence Shiri, expressing his displeasure on the deal.
In his letter to minister Shiri, minister Chadzamira is said to have complained that, instead of showing efforts to revive CSC to its glory days, Boustead was retrenching workers for a song.
The retrenchment package being given to CSC workers, the source said ,was inadequate and there were fears that the disgruntled workers might approach the Labour court for redress.
The same source said Boustead, in the likely event that the retrenched workers approach the courts for redress, the company would lose a lot of money, assets and properties as the retrenched workers had a strong case against the company.
It is alleged that the investor is specialising in rental collection from CSC properties instead of devising mechanisms to revive the ailing parastatal.
Another contact who also spoke to this publication said Boustead was dilly dallying at a time another potential investor, Luigi Cremonini of Cremonini Group, has expressed serious interest to take over the CSC deal and urgently revive the ailing company.
The same contact said Luigi Cremonini was intending to use the CSC Masvingo branch as a central point for value creation for all farmers involved in the beef sector.
Boustead took over running of CSC in February 2019 under the Livestock Joint Farming Concession Project (LJFCA) and promised to inject US$400 million in the next five years for the revival of the company.
However, the company stands accused of failing to fulfill its contractual obligations and instead of retooling CSC, Boustead has since fired some managers and retrenched some workers in a bid to destroy all institutional memory of the company so as to create a conducive climate to plunder the CSC properties without a trace.
Analysts say there is an urgent need for the Government to intervene so as to revive CSC, which is a vital cog of the economy.
