Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1019677,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1019677/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 391,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "North Horr, FAP",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Chachu Ganya",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 18,
        "legal_name": "Francis Chachu Ganya",
        "slug": "francis-ganya"
    },
    "content": "What happened is a disaster and it should never have happened. It happened due to sheer negligence and bad governance in our institutions. The eleven rhinos should never have died. It is not the first time we have relocated our wildlife species from one part of the country to the other. From 1986 to 2018, we have undertaken 289 translocations of those animals from one part of the country to the other and out of that, the mortality rate was at four per cent. During that time, a total of 1,825 were successfully translocated. We have experience, we have the knowledge and we have done it before. Why did this disaster happen this time round? This is purely due to sheer negligence and bad governance at the KWS at that time. At that time, there was no board in place. The whole board had gone home and the new one was yet to be hired. So, the responsibility was purely with the KWS and the Ministry of Wildlife and Tourism. The entire exercise was rushed, maybe, due to opportunities or maybe they wanted it done before the new board came in place. That is because the previous board did their due diligence to ensure that everything was done as per the law, global standards and best practice in wildlife translocations. They stopped this exercise before. Now that the board was not in place, I think the Ministry officials and its leadership saw that this was a golden opportunity to do what they wanted to do. As a result, due to abuse of power by those in authority, we lost eleven black rhinos which are endangered species. That is a disaster by any standard when you know there are quite a number of rhinos that are there today. What happened was due to sheer negligence because the expert knew that the boreholes had high level of alkaline and salt than it is allowed for consumption by the rhinos and yet those animals were translocated. The rhinos drunk the water with high salinity levels and, as a result, they succumbed to death. KWS has experts. If they do not, they can even acquire experts from South Africa, Botswana or Namibia where they do translocations of such animals on a regular basis. They have the network and extra capacity, but this happened. We strongly feel that those people in power, those who contributed to the death of black rhinos in one way or the other, must take full responsibility. I strongly call upon our Committee and the Committee on Implementation to ensure that whatever we have debated in this House is not in vain. We have given our recommendations and, so far, every member who has contributed is in support of this Report. This will serve as an example and will deter other authorities in future to think twice before they mess up our wildlife management and before they lead to the death of our wildlife species as it happened in this case. If this is well done, we will learn from it, and people will take responsibility from this exercise and, as a result, it will deter efforts that will be done in wildlife translocation."
}