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{
    "id": 1075667,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1075667/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 263,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Olekina",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 407,
        "legal_name": "Ledama Olekina",
        "slug": "ledama-olekina"
    },
    "content": "Madam Temporary Speaker, I support the sentiments of Sen. Wetangula and Sen. Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. on the issue of the management of these reserves. I do not know why Tsavo National Park or Amboseli National Park should be national government entities. In fact, this Senate can do the best job now. If we are not able to bring it into the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) or any other constitutional amendment, we should revert those national parks back to the county governments. The people of Kajiado would benefit immensely if they had Amboseli National Park back. Makueni County would get a share of it. When you try to reason with the current Cabinet Secretary of Tourism and Wildlife, the only thing he knows is privatization of the parks and coming up with regulations on how to manage them. At some point, he even ventures into issues that he does not have the mandate over. I remember when he was raising hell over the issue of regulations in Narok County. The Maasai Mara National Reserve belonged to the people of Narok because they are the ones who donated it. I strongly believe that even Tsavo National Park belongs to the people of Taita Taveta and Makueni while Amboseli National Park belongs to the people of Kajiado and Makueni. These are the amendments we ought to bring here during this time that we are all fighting to increase own source revenue from the counties. We should consider those as part of the own source revenue. Sen. Mwaruma, saying that a small percentage from the national Government should go back to the county government is not the solution. We ought to be pushing for taking these assets back to the counties. Madam Temporary Speaker, we are lucky that 19 per cent of the money that is collected in Narok County supports the communities to deal with the issue of compensation. That 19 per cent is not enough. We are talking of a small percentage of 5 per cent of the revenue collected from Tsavo National Park to go back to the communities. If 19 per cent is not enough, what about 5 per cent? The argument we should be having on the Floor of this House is how to revert the management of national assets back to the people. One of the things that really annoys me is that we are hungry to get land. We encroach into the parks, but when we propose to have a buffer zone--- For instance, in the case of Maasai Mara, there is no reason we should not have a 10-kilometre radius buffer zone as a migration corridor, so that we limit human-wildlife conflict. Instead of the Cabinet Secretary thinking about that and trying to create public participation, he is talking about privatization. How are we going to help that? If you look at the International Journal of Scientific and Research publications of 2014, you will see that a survey on how to resolve the issue of human-wildlife conflict was carried out. About 60 per cent of the people said that if they are not willing to compensate people, then they should put up an electric fence to let wild animals stay in the parks and people will stay in their areas but that was never done. It is time we became serious on this issue of human-wildlife conflict. We should not only prioritize the issue of compensating wildlife and not human beings."
}