KWS OFFICIALS IMPLICATED IN HELL’S GATE AMUSEMENT PARK SAGA TO GET INTERDICTED
(Posted 28th April 2018)
Kenya’s Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary Najib Balala wasted no time after he got tagged left right and centre on his Twitter and other social media accounts about the ongoing construction of an amusement park inside the Hell’s Gate National Park.
He reportedly went to visit the site himself after being alerted by some of Kenya’s leading conservationists and promptly ordered the company involved in the construction out of the park.
It is also understood that at least three KWS staff, allegedly in cohorts with the developers, are to be interdicted for the involvement in the scheme.
Hell’s Gate National Park is one of Kenya’s great adventure areas for hiking and mountain biking just a hundred kilometres from the capital Nairobi. The park has become the venue for an annual wheelbarrow race aimed to raise funds and awareness for conservation.
The park has according to conservationists in Kenya already been encroached when the geothermal power plant was expanded and the owners then added the Olkaria Spa facility with open air hot water pools and buildings inside the park boundaries, now a fait accompli of course and not likely to be facing orders to be pulled down.
The new amusement park however will find it very hard now to be built inside the park as the conservation community, already outraged over the defiance of court orders by the railway company building inside the Nairobi National Park.
‘We are encouraged by the prompt action of CS Balala. He needs to act on KWS’ board and management as quickly as possible as the old regime has failed Kenyans. Balala also ought to stop the railway construction inside the Nairobi National Park while stop orders are in place and not let impunity by Kenya Railways and the Chinese construction company trample our inheritance like that‘ ranted a regular source from Nairobi in a communication overnight.
