Environment Police forces start training

Mar 28, 2012

Government needs over 650 environment police officers in order to primary deal with enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, state minister for environment, Flavia Munabi said.

By Nicholas Kajoba          

Government needs over 650 environment police officers in order to primary deal with enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, state minister for environment, Flavia Munabi said.

A total of 153 police officers were assigned to work under the Environment Police protection unit Force (EPF) recently.

Munaabi was opening a three day’s workshop for environment police officers at Colline Hotel, Mukono on Tuesday, March, 27, 2012.  Ministry of water and environment organized the training.

The training is to build capacity for police officers to ensure that the provisions of laws and regulations related to environment are complied with in their areas of Jurisdictions.

Munaabi said that for the past fifteen years government through the ministry has taken up several measures to enforce environment laws and regulations. He cited gazzetting and equipping technical officers as environmental inspectors in accordance with National Environment Act.

“We have faced challenges especially in monitoring and enforcing environmental laws and failure to arrest persons who commits crimes related to environment abuse, “she said.

Munaabi said that new constituent Environment police force would help to curb and decrease on the cases related to environmental crimes.

However penalties for wetland abuse related to failing to carry-out environmental impact assessment carries a fine of Sh18m or jail sentence of 18 months.

“We have environmental crime cases like causing pollution, failure to restore orders and easement and general penalties all of them carry maximum sentence of 18 months or fine Sh12m,”Munaabi said.

She said that the training helps to retool the EPF with knowledge and skills necessary to deal with environment related crimes. Munaabi warned police officers against extorting money or bribes from the wetland degraders saying that this would dent the Image of the force.

She said that the constitution of 1995 empowers local government to hold trust and protect wetlands, and water bodies countrywide.

“The efforts that the government has put are timely because environment and natural resources were being degraded on rapid scale sometimes out of greed and indifference. Even the floods we experience in urban and rural areas are due to unplanned settlement,”Munaabi said.

The Commissioner for wetlands, Paul Mafabi said that the ministry carries out routine compliance monitoring, inspections and enforcement of legal provisions among the communities.

He said that environment inspectors face challenges of disregards to existing policies and laws with impunity and slow trial of environment crime suspects.

“As ministry we face challenges of inadequacy to sufficiently investigate environmental crime and laxity in providing 24 hour surveillance in ensuring zero tolerance to environmental degradation, “he said. 

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