Caswell Tlali
MASERU — Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has waded into the ongoing dispute between dairy farmers and the Lesotho National Dairy Board (LNDB) over the control of the Lesotho Dairy Products (LDP).
Thabane told the Sunday Express last night that dairy farmers had persistently requested him to intervene in the dispute.
Thabane said he has instructed Agriculture Minister Litšoane Litšoane to urgently resolve the impasse.
“This issue deserves to be given priority,” Thabane said.
The prime minister said dairy farmers complained to him even before he took the prime ministerial office.
“They petitioned me not to forget their plight when I get in government”.
For the past two decades dairy farmers and the LNDB have been at each other’s throat.
The farmers say the LNBD makes it easy for foreign companies and extremely hard for local dairy farmers to break into the industry.
The farmers also accuse the LNDB of hijacking the LDP, a public company established by the government with the help of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 1987.
They allege that when CIDA left the country it gave its shares to the local dairy associations but the LNBD decided to keep those shares.
The LDP is a company that processes and packages milk from local dairy farmers.
It was supposed to be controlled by dairy associations but over the years it had been headed by the same people who sit on the LNDB board.
The result, the farmers say, is that the same people who regulate the industry by virtue of their positions as LNDB directors also run the LDP, a company they regulate.
An investigation carried out in 2009 revealed that the LNBD breached corporate governance principles when it became a shareholder in LDP.
The LDP is a company which is supposed to get a permit from the LNDB to process milk.
The farmers complain that the LNDB hindered some of them from entering the milk processing business because they would be potential competitors of the LDP.
Dairy farmers’ associations have on several times complained to the government that the LNDB was protecting the LDP’s monopoly by frustrating small-scale farmers.
The LNDB, whose mandate is to regulate the dairy industry, is also accused of lowering the price of milk to below the production costs so that Lesotho relies on imported milk from which it gets a levy.
On Thursday Litšoane held a meeting with dairy farmers and the LDP management after Thabane instructed him to resolve the dispute between the two sides.
Matsibolo Dairy Farmers Association chairperson, Thabang Buti, confirmed they met Litšoane on Thursday and set up a task team to deal with the matter.
“It is true that Minister Litšoane met us and told us that the Prime Minister had instructed him to ensure that this problem is solved quickly,” Buti said.
“We are hopeful that this time there will be a real solution to this stalemate,” he said.
“Dairy farmers’ contribution to the economy of this country will be meaningful at last.”
A forensic investigation sanctioned by former finance minister, Timothy Thahane, found that it was improper for the LNDB to control the LDP because that made it both a player and a referee in the dairy industry.
The LNDB was established by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1991 to prescribe standards of production, storage, packaging, processing and distribution of dairy products.
It also has authority to issue permits to companies that produce, process and distribute dairy products.
In 2011 farmers sought cabinet intervention after the then agriculture minister, Lesole Mokoma, failed to resolve their dispute with LNDB.
The late agriculture minister Rakoro Phororo had also turned a blind eye to dairy farmers’ murmurings against the LNDB.
Early this year the then agriculture minister Ralechate ’Mokose set up a task team to deal with farmers’ grievances but nothing changed.
Many farmers are now selling milk directly to the public, bypassing LDP.
Health and hygiene regulations require that a farmer should take milk to the licenced processor before it can reach the market and the only qualified processor is the
LDP.