Member of Parliament for Okavango Bagalatia Arone stopped short of calling the government a disgrace for encouraging the controversial hunting ban. The clearly uneasy Arone said the initiative should be relaxed to avoid any further negative ripple effects.
The MP advised government to relax some restrictions of the hunting ban following complains that some elephants were destroying people’s property and their agricultural produce. When debating the National Development Plan 11 Draft, Arone said the ban is significantly affecting the Northern parts of the country like Boteti, Okavango and Chobe areas.
He called on government to venture into selective ban approach as oppose to complete hunting ban which is a headache to some members of the community in some parts of the country.
‘’I’m very familiar with the Education system and we should up our strength to push accounting officers (Permanent Secretaries) to be productive to deliver on government promises to create more jobs for Batswana. I don’t totally oppose the hunting ban but I support selective approach as opposed to the complete hunting ban. People in the Lake Ngami should be allowed to go into fishing business and create more jobs than a complete ban on fishing,” said Arone.
He said cabinet should not allow itself to be misled by some accounting officers in taking unsympathetic decisions which reflect badly on the ground.
“We lack leadership in terms of strategies particularly when dealing with monitoring and evaluation and we should draw serious lessons from NDP 10 and avoid a repeat of it going forward and come up with good ideas to create more jobs during the NDP 11,” said Arone.
Arone also said tourism helps reduce unemployment and decried over the fact that there a few local citizens in the tourism sector. He urged government to encourage game farming in the Chobe District especially by encouraging rearing and artificial insemination on Antelopes to avoid any shortage of them in the area.
‘’Chobe area should be known for game meat and young people should be allowed to group together and venture into tourism business. We are saying Job creation should be key in our NDP 11 so encouraging young people to do some of the Tourism activities and relaxing hunting ban should also take our centre stage in our employment creation.” said Aron
Arone said proper leadership, monitoring and evaluation should be taken seriously in trying to diversify economy and eventually creating more jobs to Batswana.
