Durban - Campaigning to save rhinos had to come from the people if it was to have any hope of success, KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Economic Development and Tourism, Mike Mabuyakhulu, said on Thursday.
He was addressing the finance portfolio committee at the department’s budget hearing in the provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg.
He said that 52 rhinos had been killed in KwaZulu-Natal this year.
The figure should “make us all worried”. This was why the people needed to “own the campaign”, to stop the killing.
However, the provincial government was ready to use the national resources that protected the borders and work with society to fight against rhino poaching.
Commenting on the previous year’s budget, the chief financial officer of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, Darius Chitate, said the revenue earned (R902 million) was less than anticipated (R943m).
One of the reasons was because budgets were set too high for park and resort accommodation. It seemed that while there were many people who visited Ezemvelo facilities, they did not stay over.
A committee member asked if the roads were bad.
Chief executive Bandile Mkhize replied that Ezemvelo had started with an exercise to assess all its roads and determine what needed to be done for them to be durable. Money had already been spent on this and, in this financial year, more was budgeted.
Talking about the background that led to a strike by Ezemvelo employees, its board chairman, Comfort Ngidi, said an independent consultant had been appointed to look into the organisation’s organogram and suggested that payment should be structured at a particular level, starting with senior managers, scaling down.
Ezemvelo then began to increase the salaries of senior managers first. Staff were unhappy with this and went on strike.
The MEC intervened and set up a task team to investigate. He ordered that senior managers repay their increases and be paid what they had been previously.
Ngidi said that the task would be finished this month.
The Mercury reported last month that the staff were angry that only senior managers had benefited from the salary adjustments.
The Mercury