Police under fire from Katutura meat sellers

DISHEARTENED meat sellers at Windhoek’s Single Quarters claim that alleged corruption and carelessness within the Police force are threatening their livelihood.

According to them, Police officers make regular visits to their businesses, searching for stolen cattle allegedly being sold illegally at the Single Quarters. If the vendors cannot produce documentation proving that the carcasses were bought legally, the Police confiscate the meat until its origin can be confirmed. But some meat sellers tell a different story. ‘Sometimes we have all the papers and they still come and take our meat,’ complained one woman. ‘They come and take the meat in the morning and just leave it in the back of their truck all day. Then they bring it back the next day and say, ‘okay, you can take your meat now’ but the meat has gone bad. What are we supposed to do with the meat now?’ The meat sellers are urging Police officers to check the heads of the animals instead of confiscating all the meat. All Namibian cattle are required by the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) to be tagged with tamper-proof ear tags which allow animals to be traced from the slaughterhouse back to the farm from which they originated. Each tag is marked with a unique producer code and animal series number.The complainants argue that confiscating the meat is not practical, as meat cannot be identified just by looking at it. Checking the ear-tags would be a much fairer method of verification, they say, and would allow them to keep their meat and sell it.The window of opportunity to sell the meat is small; even if the meat is returned on the same day, most customers buy their meat in the morning. Some sellers claim that the only way to hold on to their meat is by allegedly bribing the Police officers. ‘They’ll say, ‘let’s talk’ and then demand something like N$500. If you pay, everything is fine and they leave your meat,’ they claim.Members of the City Police Stock Theft Unit, who deal with inspections and confiscations, were unavailable for comment.At least four individuals have been taken into custody for selling ‘stolen meat’.The accused were granted bail of N$5 000 each, but not all of them were able to raise this amount.While the sellers acknowledge that cattle theft is a serious problem, they are pleading with the Police to find a better way to implement the law.’We are making a loss,’ said Laban Haikonda, one of the vendors at the Single Quarters. ‘I don’t know how we’ll survive this.’ndapwa@namibian.com.na