Africa-Press – Botswana. The PAC has heard that bickering over revenue generated from hunting quotas results in the intended beneficiaries, the communities, being denied access to the funds they need to improve their lives.
Community trusts are embroiled in fighting over revenue generated from hunting quotas in an industry originally aimed at enabling rural communities to benefit from their wildlife resources.
The trusts have generated P105 million since 2021 through the sale of hunting quotas and community tourism activities but the funds are said to have caused rifts among them because fund utilization remains a problem.
This revelation was made by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment and Tourism, Boatametse Modukanele, to the 61st Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearings last week.
Greed
Modukanele revealed that while the ministry invented the Community-Based Natural Resource Management Program to benefit rural communities, the reality is that the revenue generated has created an atmosphere of greed in some community trusts.
“The challenge that we are facing is that we are realising that there is a lot of money generated through hunting and community tourism, but the utilisation of the money is a big problem because nowadays people are fighting over this money at community level,” he said.
The community trusts are given hunting quotas by selling hunting licences to international hunters. Botswana issues 400 elephant licences per year that can be sold for up to $50 000 (P669 533) each.
Up to $50 000 per licence
Speaking during the Committee of Supply sessions in March this year, the Minister of the Environment and Tourism, Wynter Mmolotsi, told Parliament that Botswana made P42.8 million from hunting quotas in the 2024 hunting season.
In most cases, community trusts use the bulk of the proceeds from the hunting quotas to give back to their communities. The charitable deeds include building houses for the needy, providing food, setting up funeral schemes, providing scholarships and environmental initiatives, among others.
During a kgotla meeting in Kazungula in April, Mmolotsi critcised the maladministration in community trusts as a hinderance to community development.
He stated that the infighting defeats the purpose of the community trusts because they should be advancing sustainable community initiatives.
Source: Botswana Gazette
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