NEW TANAPA RULES ON PARK ENTRIES SEEN AS ‘DECLARATION OF WAR’ ON COMMUNITIES
(Posted 04th January 2015)
‘Our national park managers are just too greedy. They are greedy for power to extend their control over the community based WMA’s [Wildlife Management Areas] and they are greedy for money. If they begin to charge tourists another truckload of money to come back into the park after visiting community projects which are bordering the park, the number of visitors will drop. The next thing you hear, because communities no longer benefit from tourism, is that poaching has gone up, crime has gone up and then what. What the hell is wrong with these people that they constantly rub off the tourism industry the wrong way. Whenever they talk of partnership they should bite off their tongues because it is lies. They only look for partners when they need something from the tourism private sector, but otherwise they are fast turning into enemies’ ranted a regular tourism source from Arusha when news broke that TANAPA, hiding behind a purported directive from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, was going to charge multiple entrance fees to the parks for tourists exiting and then returning.
TANAPA first tried, according to the information availed, to ambush the industry with such measures two years ago but was stopped by the then minister and is now reportedly once again trying to operationalize these controversial charges in a cloak and dagger fashion.
Predictably was neither TANAPA nor the ministry on record over the plans but local tour and safari operators as well as community leaders from WMA areas have vowed to use all legal measures within their reach to stop the plans.
Another source hastily added another dimension when claiming that as Tanzania is now entering an election year, vested interest groups may run riot due to the waning lack of political control and direction, as current and former members of the cabinet are jockeying for publicity in the run up to party nominations for the presidential election later this year. ‘Some of our ministers are now busy to sell themselves as a potential candidate for the presidential elections and what do they care what happens anywhere else. Our tourism minister has such ambitions but what he is forgetting is the wrath of the people in the WMA areas who will start making a lot of noise. He will be busy putting out fires under his own chair instead of lighting them under the chairs of others’. Harsh words but in similar fashion then repeated by several others, who then also accused TANAPA to use the upcoming pre-election vacuum to get away with things which a resolute and determined minister would stop in its tracks.
A senior staff of one of Arusha’s leading tour and safari companies in closing then added: ‘If we have to pay another park entrance fee when our clients return to for instance the Serengeti after visiting a community project which is located outside the park boundaries, we will simply stop offering such options because it is becoming far too expensive. The communities will very quickly turn their anger against TANAPA and personally I see a potential increase for vandalism, more poaching and perhaps even direct violence against TANAPA staff. They will be seen as the enemy of such community initiatives, as the one who is trying to take their livelihood away, and as you said some time ago, choices have consequences’.
Indeed they have and should TANAPA once again opt to go down a dead end road, they have no one to blame but themselves for what is likely to happen next.
