Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority (TAWA) has lined up 75 hunting blocks for auction.
The areas with game animals are set to go under the hammer through an online auction, the conservation agency announced on Saturday.
Such blocks are located within Game Reserves, Game Controlled Areas and Open Areas and will be auctioned from January 12 this year, an exercise that will last for seven days.
According to a statement availed by TAWA to the media yesterday, the blocks have been categorized in two groups, where 26 of the hunting blocks’ tenure will commence immediately after the auctioning exercise in 2022, while the second group, which comprises of 49 blocks and whose tenure will start in January next year.
“Eligible hunting companies can be allocated up to five hunting blocks each, which shall be of different categories,” clarified the statement.
According to the Wildlife Conservation Act, no person shall be considered for allocation of a hunting block unless he has a company registered with the Registrar of Companies within Tanzania intending to engage in the hunting of animals.
The company also needs to have at least one of the Directors to have five years- experience in wildlife-based business and conservation in Tanzania.
The Act further stipulates that the tenure of ownership of hunting blocks to be 10 years for Category I and II hunting blocks and 15 years for Category III hunting blocks, whereas the Minister responsible for Tourism and Natural Resources, shall on the fifth year of the tenure of ownership of a hunting block, determine the continuity of the tenure.
The Minister’s decision shall be based on the annual performance assessment and the evaluation of the hunting block utilization and the full performance of the company allocated a hunting block to be carried out in the fourth year of the tenure, which shall take into account the annual assessment and the evaluation criteria prescribed in the regulation.
According to TAWA, an application fee for category I block fetches 11.4mn/-($5,000) while that in category II costs 4.5mn/-($2,000).
Those falling under category III would retail at 2.2mn/-($1,000).
“Applicants will complete an online registration through the appropriate e-form provided…after successful registration, an applicant will be assigned an auto-generated username and password sent via their registered e-mail addresses to enable them to access the e-auction portal,” detailed the statement.
While addressing tourism stakeholders back in October 2017, former Tourism Minister, Hamis Kigwangalla stated that all hunting permits would by then be reapplied through an online auction.
According to the minister, issuing the hunting permits through auction would make the exercise more transparent with a view of curbing the otherwise rampant corruption in the process of issuing hunting licenses.
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