Magufuli halts eviction of reserve trespasserstheir
President John Magufuli yesterday ordered immediate suspension of planned eviction of people in 366 villages and hamlets, which are alleged to have encroached the reserved areas, countrywide.
Dr Magufuli further directed all the ministries involved in the plan to instead identify the villages and hamlets to pave way for amendments of the existing conservation legislations to provide for distribution of land to the villagers.
The Head of State issued the instructions at the State House in Dar es Salaam during his meeting with the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Dr Hamis Kigwangallah, Chief Secretary Ambassador John Kijazi and Deputy Minister for Livestock and Fishery Abdallah Ulega.
Also present at the meeting were Permanent Secretary in the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government Engineer Joseph Nyamhanga and his counterpart in the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development Dorothy Mwanyika.
President Magufuli further directed the ministries to identify all reserved areas and forests, which no longer host wild animals and allocate them to livestock keepers and farmers.
“The ministry of natural resources and tourism should reexamine the demarcation of borders between reserves and villages. It should be reasonable in demarcating the borders to ensure that it does not remove people in areas which are no longer necessary for reserves.
“I hate seeing pastoralists being chased from one place to another; if there is an area which was a habitat of wild animals but it no longer serves the purpose, we have to amend the law and distribute it to livestock keepers and farmers,” he ordered.
Dr Magufuli was optimistic that identification of redundant wild animals’ habitat will enable the government to re-distribute the land to other uses like livestock keeping, farming and human settlements.
“We should consider the plight of the people we are leading, it’s now upon you to look for the best ways to address the issue.
But we also need wild animals, I don’t mean that we are going to re-distribute all national parks country wide, we must as well preserve the active reserves,” he stated.
Dr Magufuli directed the responsible ministries to identify the affected villages in one-month time after which a process to amend the law will be initiated by tabling a bill in the National Assembly during the forthcoming session.
He was categorical that the government must take bold actions given the country’s population that has grown to about 55 million people, leading to high demand for land.
“Tanzania currently has 55 million people and 35 million livestock and yet at independence there were only nine million people and 10 million livestock,” he explained.
Dr Magufuli on the other hand called for review of the law governing water catchment areas, which has been thorny for people cultivating crops on river banks, expressing displeasure on some leaders who destroy crops within 60 metres from rivers.
President Magufuli praised the ministry of lands, housing and human settlements development for its proposals to revoke tittle deeds for privatised undeveloped estates.