African Parks has embarked on a community project to construct 10 institutional houses for area Chiefs in Kalabo’s Liuwa National Park at a cost of K1.2 million.
Community Manager Walubita Sifuniso confirmed the development in an interview with ZANIS today saying three houses have since been completed and scheduled for handover.
Mr. Sifuniso said the project was a way of paying back to the community for their commitment to support wildlife conservation in the area adding that Chiefs are heralds of sustainable growth.
He disclosed that African Parks will endeavour to support traditional structures of the Barotse Royal Establishment through establishment of institutional houses in Liuwa where the Chiefs would be operating from.
He said his organization firmly appreciates traditional leadership and its spheres of responsibility in managing land tenure, local justice, conflict resolution and implementation of customary law hence the need for them to have permanent institutional houses.
Mr. Sifuniso noted that once constructed, the institutional houses would enable the traditional leaders to effectively engage into community mobilization and thereby contribute towards national development.
He observed that the Chiefs are advocates of wildlife conservation whose potential would fully be realized if provided with institutional houses which would multipurpose both as residential and official quarters.
African Parks is a non-profit conservation organization that took over Liuwa national park in 2003 to secure the area’s vast landscape, protect endangered species and restore wildlife in a bid to inculcate economic development, alleviate poverty and promote ecological sustainance among communities living there.
Will one house cost k1.2 million or 10 houses for that amount?
African parks never took over the management of the park but its being co-managed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife and BRE
African Parks is better than these scam artists called Dalas Safari Club who are trophy hunters and killing lions and elephants and endangered species for trophies to ship back to the US to be mounted on walls as trophies. This is the argument on Facebook by a gentleman from Lusaka living in Kitwe who has a Facebook page called Zambia WildlifePreservation. The fight was the Safari Club International was calling him uneducated and ignorant. The fight did not go well for the Bazungu’s who later ran away. He really told them off on their Facebook page and on his page. They learnt their lesson. The guys Facebook page again is: Zambia WildlifePreservation. Wonder what ba tourism minister thinks of this?