26 Mar 2014

President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama has called on parents to stop abdicating responsibility for their children’s education and assume that their children are the sole responsibility of the government.

Speaking at a kgotla meeting at Satau in the Chobe District on March 24, President Khama discouraged parents from waiting to be called by teachers for meetings, saying they should be proactive in their children’s education.

“To some extent, yes, these students are our responsibility but you are their parents from A to Z, therefore it is your duty to assess their education and the level of their understanding,” he said.

He said government was responsible for providing teachers, schools and facilities for learning, but when it came to results, teachers, students and parents had to account.

President Khama further observed that student results in areas where parents played an active role in their children’s education produced better grades than those whose parents were not involved.

The President’s concern was prompted by some of the residents who had complained that parents had no time for their children’s education yet they were quick to blame teachers for poor results.

On wildlife, one of the residents, Mr Philimon Zambo, complained that the recently announced hunting ban had killed their source of income, thereby affecting the necessary developments in the village.

Mr Zambo also complained that people were not properly consulted about the ban as such, they remained clueless as to why it was in existence in the first place.

He also complained about the compensation for wild animals saying it was practically impossible to chase predators such as lions away when they attacked their livestock just for the sake of compensation.

“Lions are vicious; they always come back to attack, so killing them helps in getting rid of them for good,” he argued, adding that the policy must be reviewed.

In response, the Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Mr Tshekedi Khama, said that the tourism fund would help trusts and organisations such as the Chobe Enclave Conservation Trust (CECT) to carry on with other projects than the through the hunting fund.

“The ban was introduced because the numbers of some species were going down,” he said. President Khama said that they were trying to avoid a situation whereby some people would embark on a hunt to find the lion that attacked their livestock as opposed to attacking it on the scene.

“People were abusing this. They would kill as many as five lions at one go disregarding the fact that only one lion attacked their kraal,” he noted.

He advised farmers to at least shoot their guns in the air to scare predators off. “Le leke pele gore le seka la e bolaya,” he urged. Some residents also complained about being barred from fishing in areas like Shaile with no proper explanation as to why that was the case.

“It has been about three years now and we have tried to negotiate but to no avail. We were eventually told that CECT was responsible for chasing us away,” said one Mutare Mainga. He also complained about fishing seasons which he said were unfair on them as Namibians never closed for fishing yet they shared the same river.

Director of wildlife and national parks, Dr Oduetse Kobotlo, explained that Namibia also had closing and open fishing seasons in their policy. “However they do not enforce it but it is there on paper,” he said. Ends