05 Mar 2020

The Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conversation and Tourism has compensated family of a woman who was killed by a hippopotamus in Oliphants Drift.

Responding to a question in Parliament on Wednesday, Minister Phildah Kereng explained that out of P70 000 that was paid, P20 000 was for funeral expenses.

A cheque was handed to the family in Oliphant’s Drift on the January 22, she added.

Ms Kereng said the community had been sensitised on various forums on precautions to be taken to avoid encountering the same incident.

She stated that a brief was held with the village development committee on December 1, 2019 while another briefing was planned for the committee othis week.

Ms Kereng explained that patrol teams involving police and Botswana Defence Force were rotated in Oliphant’s Drift on monthly basis in search of the concerned animal with the intention of putting it down.

MPs were also informed that the Department of Wildlife and National Parks office in Mochudi received a report on November 25, 2019 that a person had been killed by a hippopotamus in Oliphant’s Drift and three officers set off on the same day to attend to the report.

“A patrol team was immediately dispatched from Mochudi office with an instruction to search and kill the problem hippopotamus as soon as it was sighted, but it was never found,” she said.

She was answering a question from Member of Parliament for Mochudi East, Mr Mabuse Pule, who wanted to know what action had been taken by the wildlife department about the said hippopotamus since it was dangerous to lives and whether the department had compensated the family. ENDS