29 Nov 2016

Elephants have deterred the youth's ambitions to venture in to businesses destroying their businesses and projects' fields.

This came up during an inspection of projects in Boteti by the Presidential Inspectorate Team lead by Mr Gaotlhaetse Matlhabaphiri in Rakops recently.

One of the beneficiaries of Youth Development Fund Ms Mmutsi Sangwende said she ventured into tree nursery and gardening project funded at a tune of about P86 000 in 2012.

The project she said collapsed in 2013, as elephants destroyed her plants. She did not qualify for compensation but was only compensated for fence.

An official from the department of Wildlife Mr John Kepaletswe, said Wildlife guidelines did not provide for compensations of ornamentals.

He said Wildlife guidelines that effected in 2013 did not include ornamentals and roses for compensation, noting that they seek help from head office in respect of projects that were not covered for compensation.

He stated that they would establish means to see how they could help her during 2017 financial year.

Compensation payments he said have been undertaken up to 2013 and were left with those for 2014.

Mr Kepaletswe also stated that they pool vehicles from different departments to attend to different reported cases including local government.

Mr Matlhabaphiri had requested him to explain why they could not compensate her for damages saying they should have done something to assist her looking at the magnitude of the project and capital injected into it.

He asked him to state other measures they have put in place to address the issue of elephants destroying projects and fields saying they could not be dependent on compensation only.

He also asked Mr Kepaletswe to explain why they fail to attend to reported cases due to lack of transport, requesting him to explain why they could not source transport from other departments.

Another member of the inspectorate team Mr Boeditswe Masilo asked him to make a recommendation detailing the magnitude of the project and damages encountered.

In addition Mr Kepaletswe further explained that government had installed a fence.

Electricity of the fence he said was disabled when Boteti River started flowing since there were other points of the fence which ran on the river bed.

The department he said was currently establishing a 150 kilometers fence alongside the river which would be erected on the side of the village.

However residents of the affected villages he said were against the  installation of the fence, and had complained that it covered parts of their land. ENDS