Mathatisi Sebusi
THE Ministry of Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs and Police has failed to effectively register and mark livestock due to officers bunking work.
It appears the government has been paying ghosts as no people reported for work to register the livestock despite being paid on a monthly basis for the past three years.
This was revealed before the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Law and Public Safety this week.
The employees alleged to be dodging work while still getting paid are youths recruited under the Livestock Registration, Marking and Information System (LRMIS). They were engaged by the previous Moeketsi Majoro-led administration on three-year contracts scheduled to expire by the end of this month.
The revelation was made during the ministry’s appearance before the committee where it dealt with problems in issuance of passports and renewal of identity documents, 90 days visa exemption issue to the Republic of South Africa, marking of livestock and lack of financial resources to implement Local Government (transfer of Functions) Amendment Regulations, 2023.
The committee asked the ministry’s National Livestock Register Manager, Pitso Ramokoatsi, if he was aware that officials under the LRMIS project did not report for work but were getting paid for the time they spent at home.
The committee said the work could have been completed within two years but had been pending for nine years.
“Your department has been dragging a job that should have been finished within two years for almost nine years because of officials who do not show up at work. This is unacceptable. Why is it that the job is not done while all resources are available?” asked committee chairperson Mokoena Ramakatsa.
The objective of the LRMIS is to secure livestock ownership, production and marking through the setting up of a modern livestock registration and marking system. The system ensures ways of viewing livestock owners in Lesotho, the total number of livestock in Lesotho and to track the origin and ownership of livestock through marking.
Furthermore, the system also provides means of categorizing Livestock owners into owner individuals, institutions or traders. The system uses biometric fingerprint identification to map livestock owners to their animals. LRMIS is operated in all the ten districts of Lesotho.
Mr Ramokoatsi was also asked how many livestock his department was able to mark per day, how many they had marked since inception of the project in 2015 and how many livestock they were yet to register and mark.
In response, Mr Ramokoatsi confirmed that his office was facing a challenge of officials who did not report for work. He said he had been addressing the challenge through disciplinary proceedings.
He said their performance started dropping between 2020 and 2021.
“Our journey has not been an easy one, as we should have finalised registering and marking livestock bred after 2015 by now.
“Bad performance started in 2020/2021 and it dropped with each year. This year we tried to perform better, while last year was the year with the worst performance.
“We hope that going forward, things will get better and we will be able to ensure that Lesotho livestock is protected as expected from us,” he said.
He said Lesotho had livestock estimated to be between 4.5 million and 5 million and they had only managed to register 59 percent of the livestock.
“Out of the registered livestock, we have marked 44.4 percent of them. We have an estimate of 400 000 livestock owners across the country and we have managed to register 43.1 percent of them,” Mr Ramokoatsi said.
Mr Ramokoatsi said they had achieved those statistics since they started with the project in 2015.
He said on a normal day, they were able to mark 70 tall animals (cattle, donkeys, and horses) or 200 short livestock (sheep and goats).
Mr Ramokoatsi said they had 71 stations designated to mark livestock across the country.
While the committee also observed that other reasons for bad performance could be Basotho not bringing their animals for registration and marking, it urged Mr Ramokoatsi and his team to do their work as expected of them.
