Writes Leo Odera Omolo
Three Chinese foreign construction workers were last night arrested and placed in police custody pending their appearance in court.
The three Chinese and their Kenyan aide were arrested by scouts and rangers of the Kenya Wildlife Services {KWS}.The incident took place at the Olkaria Geothermal power station project, which is currently under construction about 90 kilometer south west of the capital, Nairobi.
The four were arrested only a few hours after they killing the python. According to the police sources in Naivasha town , the four skinned the snake before cutting it into small pieces to make a stew meat.
The Chinese foreign workers are engaged on the construction site. They are said to have been making big influx into the nearby Hell-Gate National Game Park an area which is poplar with foreign tourists.
The local Maasai pastoralist’s herdsmen had tipped the KWS rangers deployed by the KWS to guard the game park and protect tourist sceneries within the area.
Naivasha Police Chief Paul Korir confirmed the arrest of the three foreign workers and their Kenyan accomplices, adding that they have been released on police bail and would be taken to court within two or three days to answer the charges of being in illegal possession of game trophy, namely python skin and meat.
The Kenya Wildlife Services officers acting on a tip-off visited the camp site where they Chinese were being housed and found them cooking a snake meat. A large number of Chinese foreign workers later flocked the local police station to inquire about the fate of the colleagues.
Koriri said it was against Kenyan laws for any unauthorized person to kill mammals and wildlife that is “why we have arrested them”
There has been hue and cry ever since the great influx of Chinese foreign workers and businessmen into Kenya. Moist of these Chinese are engaged in construction of roads and other projects previous undertaken by international construction firms from the European Union and other Western countries.
The arrival of thousands of Chinese in Kenya is also said to be related to the increases and alarming cases of poachers who have been killing elephants at large to the near extinction of the Jumbos.
A lot of consignments of illegal export of elephant tusks have been discovered while on transit in far places like Hong Kong, Bankok in Thailand, and other foreign capitals. The tusks are believed to have been originating in Kenya, though the country has placed a total ban on elephant tusks trade.
Elephant and both white and black rhinos are classified in Kenya as endangered animals species and are under twenty four hour protection by the government through the KWS. But the poachers armed with deadly and sophisticated weapons are said to be coming from the ungovernable Somalia neighbor, and the Chinese merchants are believed to be working in cohort with the poachers from Somalia.
ENDS