Poaching, selling of illegal bush-meat on the rise

Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday May 26, 2015 16:47

This illegal game meat market is fed from the high incidence of poaching in some parts of the country, said the chief accounting officer for ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism Elias Magosi.

“Our ministry has found out that there are secret places for bush-meat market. Some of these poachers include some Batswana and foreigners. The painful thing is that some members of the community know these poachers and they are working with them. This is common in areas like Okavango where our anti-poaching unit has few workers,” Magosi told the PAC.

He said there is need to strengthen some of their anti-poaching efforts in some areas, and that one of their strategies is to engage some of these poachers especially the ones who are Batswana in order to help them to arrest poachers.

“We hope that cases of poaching will decline if we work hand in hand secretly with some of these people. We would be able to know more about this secretive bush meat market,” he said.

When he appeared before the committee to account for his department, the director for the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) Isaac Kgosi concurred with Magosi.

“(The) Department of security is concerned with the high numbers of cases that we are continuing to register for poaching. We are doing all that we can to arrest these gangsters. I want to assure this committee that we are not going to be intimidated to follow up these culprits,” Kgosi said.

On other issues, Kgosi expressed worry about cases of child trafficking, peddling of false information, drugs, smuggling of vehicles and other organised crime that continue to grow in the country.

“We are now registering cases of some Batswana and foreigners who have a tendency of swindling people money and their goods claiming that they are DIS people. We managed to arrest some while some are on the run. I want to appeal to people to always ask for people’s identity before they can search them,” he said.

The DIS boss said he was concerned that some Batswana who declare themselves as refugees in countries like Canada and Germany claim to be harassed by DIS or that their lives are in danger because of political reasons.