• MP says eight schools have been confirmed closed down due to marauding elephants.
• Former senator says KWS bosses clueless about issues affecting pastoralists.
Three Kajiado leaders want a member of the pastoralist communities to head Kenya Wildlife Service to resolve human-wildlife conflicts.
Former senator Peter Mositet said on Wednesday top directors of KWS are “clueless” on pertinent issues affecting pastoralists in areas bordering national parks.
Mositet said hundreds of Kenyans, especially from pastoralist communities, have either been killed or maimed by wild animals they live with and those “supposed to manage compensation money appear not to have the interest of the victims at heart.”
The former senator reiterated what he said in Mashuuru on Monday while in the company of former Nairobi county assembly speaker Alex Magelo and Kajiado East MP Peris Tobiko.
Magelo had called on President Kenyatta to appoint a Maasai to take over the leadership of KWS because, he alleged, most of their people have suffered more loses than the rest of Kenyans in human-wildlife conflicts.
While in Mashuuru, MP Tobiko appealed to the President to personally look at issues surrounding human-wildlife conflicts in Kajiado, adding that there cannot be a one-way relationship between Kajiado Maasai and KWS.
“Every time there is a drought in Kajiado, KWS allows their animals to cause havoc in our farms while our livestock cannot go to the parks to graze,” the MP said.
She told the KWS to take their hyenas, lion and elephants away from the community whose schools have closed down due to human-wildlife conflicts.
“As we speak now, eight schools have been confirmed closed down due to marauding elephants in Masimba and lack of pupils. Fourteen schools have low pupil turnout and eight more have no single pupil because of the same issues in Kenyewa/Poka Zone,” Tobiko said.
The legislator complained that the education in Mashuuru Zone has been affected by interdiction of teachers by the Teachers Service Commission.
The MP said she has petitioned the Commission on Administrative of Justice to relook the issues surrounding the interdiction of 58 primary school teachers in April.
Classes ahve been disrupted in Kenyewa/Poka ward after marauding elephants were on Wednesday reported to have strayed into the area.
Subcounty Education director Stephen Sentero said elephant threats are real and are causing stress to parents and pupils.
“This is definitely going to affect their performance in the forthcoming end of year national exams. I can only confirm here that we have not closed down the schools as is reported elsewhere but what is happening is that parents fear to release their children,” Sentero said.
Sentero said the last four months have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of elephants roaming the Kenyewa/Poka ward causing immense destruction including the death of three people in a span of three weeks.
“Consequently, primary schools along the Imbuko-Kenyewa/Poka-Merrueshi strip have been grossly affected,” the sub-county director of education said in a letter dated June 19 which he addressed to Ministry headquarters in Nairobi.