Game rangers in Malawi Game Reserves have been ordered by Minister of Tourism, Culture and Wildlife Dr, Micheal Usi to ‘shoot’ all poachers.
Dr. Usi was speaking in Lilongwe when he presided over official handover of field equipment to the Department of National Parks and Wildlife life from Attorney General Alliance Africa.
According to Dr. Usi, poachers are big threat to human and animal life adding that should not be treated with kid groves.
The Minister further said poachers aim at killing rangers and animals therefore, the security personnel while following the law should use their weapons whenever the need arise.
You have just declared war. And war usually has casualties on both sides.
War declared. Please give such orders silently otherwise you will get the rangers killed. I don’t like it
What the minister said is like giving a person a blank cheque. Government is supposed to look after and take care of her citizens regardless of their standing or reputation in society. It is just like in a family whereby you find well behaved children and others or one who may be troublesome, ie a serial crook. As a parent you don’t write off the bad one, all you do is to put up remedial measures to control or lessen those bad habits. As rightly suggested by my colleague above, what the minister has done is to declare an all out confrontation between the Game Rangers and the Poachers. Definitely expect casualties on both sides. This shooting policy should have been specified and indeed the directive should only have gone to those who needed to know. Even in crowd control drills, whenever the demonstrators pause a threat to the security forces by either being armed dangerously with weapons, pangs, spears etc. the force’s initial objective is to disperse the crowd, disarm them or arrest those who are seen to be leaders, but if all those measures are exhausted the remaining alternative is to shoot, not shooting to kill but wound or incapacitate. But here the minister didn’t specify hence the danger that people will lose their lives. It is at times advisable to ask for advice from professionals, these could be the lawyers or better still the security forces. I believe it is not too late to retract the statement and restate it appropriately.