Tourism and Wildlife Cabinet Secretary (CS) Najib Balala on Wednesday morning engaged in a heated argument with Citizen TV's Waihiga Mwaura during an interview.
Responding to questions raised about the cause of death of nine rhinos that were translocated to Tsavo East National Park, the CS noted that he couldn't take responsibility for the unfortunate happenings.
The CS was agitated when Waihiga asked him if he (being the CS) will be willing to take responsibility for the deaths of the rhinos since the policies that led to the translocation were approved by his team.
Balala went ahead to exclaim: "Waihiga, you are misguided. People like you are after my blood. You are after my blood because you are coming to public media and asking me the wrong questions."
[caption caption="Tourism CS Najib Balala during his interview with Citizen TV's Waihiga Mwaura"]
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Additionally, the CS accused Waihiga of misinforming the public causing unnecessary fear and panic.
Balala also tried to clear himself from the blame revealing that as the CS, he is only tasked to foresee the building of policies that are workable depending on the circumstances.
"What we do as ministries are purely policies not approval of anything. Therefore, approval to translocate the rhinos was done by the KWS board," the CS asserted while affirming that he has complete trust on the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) management.
When asked if Kenyans will be allowed to see images of the rhinos' carcasses amid claims that they were killed by poachers, Balala mentioned that KWS would avail those images to the public on Thursday.
He also affirmed that the government's stand remains solid against the hunting of any wildlife.
"People who are emotive in this issue should rest assured that the Kenya Gazette (providing guidelines for the ministry) dictates that we are not going to accept hunting, at least not in my tenure," he concluded.
On Tuesday, the CS, who visited the park, announced that a multi-agency team has been constituted headed by an officer from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to probe the deaths of the rhinos.
Here is the video:
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