FIRST FALLOUT OF ‘LOST IVORY’ AS FIVE UWA OFFICIALS GET SUSPENDED
(Posted 19th November 2014)
A recent routine audit into the contents of the strong rooms at the Uganda Wildlife Authority had come up with some 1.35 tons of ivory missing, valued in excess of 1 million US Dollars.
Investigations are now ongoing and while it cannot be ruled out that an accounting error could have led to this result does it seem more likely that the ivory was actually stolen as has been suggested by senior government officials including President Museveni and the American Ambassador to Uganda, in his address a week ago to the delegates of the Africa Travel Association Congress.
To pave way for the unfolding investigations has UWA now suspended at least five officials, among them security intelligence officers and the Chief Warden and others with direct access to the vaults.
UWA’s Executive Director Dr. Andrew Seguya in fact cut short an official trip abroad to return home and be at hand to direct internal investigations at UWA while the Uganda Police and other security organs are equally now involved to find those involved and return the missing ivory. The recently set up special regional desk by Interpol has also been brought into the investigation, to widen the search for suspects and to track the ivory down should part or all of it being to surface somewhere.
Uganda has in the past been fingered as a country of growing importance for transiting blood ivory from countries beyond to the port of Mombasa, but poaching in Uganda’s national parks has been relatively low volume – often being of subsistence in nature to feed on – compared to for instance Tanzania, where a wholesome slaughter of elephant populations cost tens of thousands of elephant their lives over the past several years. Poaching has however taken an upward trend of late and UWA has taken steps to increase the number of intelligence officers deployed in the field to gather information from locals around potential hotspots and then either prevent poaching incidents or else bring those involved to justice.
