Over the last couple of weeks, misleading statements have been made on the various aspects of wildlife conservation, especially the recent translocation of a white rhino to Kisumu Impala Sanctuary as well as the extent of poaching.

Contrary to these unfounded statements, Kenya has had a steady recovery of key endangered species, especially elephants, rhinos and the big cats.

Sound conservation strategies

Kenya Wildlife Service and partners have developed and are implementing management and conservation strategies for key species especially elephants, lions, hyaenas, cheetahs, wild dogs, Grevy’s zebras, hirolas and sea turtles.

We are also completing conservation strategies for giraffes, bongos and roan. These efforts are bearing fruit and we are ready to share this information with interested individuals and groups.

We take pride in the fact that despite pressure on land by growing human population and competing land uses, we have secured at least one million acres of land for wildlife through community conservancies and private ranches across the country.

Challenges of conservation

At the outset, we recognise that conservation is facing challenges including poaching, loss of habitat, adverse effects of climate, wild fires and livestock incursions into protected areas. Indeed, we are experiencing worrying trends in wildlife crime though this must be understood in its global context. We keep our Government and other partners informed about these trends, formulate appropriate strategies and seek the necessary support to implement them.

Therefore, it’s not true that poaching is worse than it was at the peak of poaching in the late 1980s.

National and international obligations

As a institution conscious of its national and international obligations, KWS provides scientifically sound and accurate statistics on elephant poaching and other wildlife to the public, the media, government and other interested local and international organisations.

Indeed, we take pride that as an institution overseeing a critical public resource; our decisions are based on sound science and are verified by stakeholders. Kenya is internationally acknowledged for its robust wildlife data collection and recording systems.

Regular wildlife censuses

The information we provide is collected and shared in consultation with stakeholders, both local and international.

We conduct regular censuses for various key species of wild animals and share results with the public and stakeholders. The presence of independent stakeholders and the media to verify the census process and results is a testament to our transparency.

Therefore, poaching can’t be worse than it was in 1989 given that Kenya’s elephant population has been growing at a healthy rate of 4 per cent per annum as evidenced by our census results.

When KWS was formed poaching was at its peak with the elephant population estimated at barely 16,000 from a high of 167,000 in the 1960s. Kenya’s population has steadily recovered to the current 37,000 individuals, thanks to the efforts of KWS and stakeholders.

It is important that the public appreciates that frequent seizures of ivory on transit at Kenya’s main airports does not necessarily originate from local illegal killing of elephants. We have tightened controls at all our airports and regularly report trophy seizures.

Our records indicate that Kenya lost 278 elephants to illegal killings last year. This is factual. KWS will continue offering accurate and timely information on wildlife population dynamics to the public. Kenya has also registered remarkable success in its rhino programme despite incredible demand for rhino horns in some Asian countries.

Kenya’s rhino, both black and white, has doubled since early 1990s from an estimated 500 to the current slightly over 1,000. In the last five years, Kenya has recorded average of 4.5 per cent growth.

Unfounded allegations

As an institution, we have robust systems of sharing information on conservation activities and developments with the public.

In particular, we widely shared the reasons for the white rhino translocation on our website www.kws.go.ke. We also issued a media release on the same matter. We are ready to provide further clarification on the translocation.

Translocation any species of wildlife is informed by clearly spelt out internationally and nationally accepted protocols, criteria and guidelines.

So far, no conservationist has approached us to dispute the logic behind the action nor offered an alternative. Any criminal activities, within or without KWS, are swiftly dealt with as provided for by the law. This should be reported to KWS and other law enforcement agencies.

White rhino translocation

The background which necessitated the translocation of the white rhino to Kisumu and has been widely shared is as follows:

The white rhino released recently in Kisumu Impala Sanctuary was raised at Ol Jogi Ranch in Laikipia and was then relocated to Mugie Ranch in Laikipia. However, because he had been hand raised he proved a security risk as he constantly sought human company. As such, KWS was compelled to transfer the rhino to Nairobi National Park.

Here again, in search of people he took to frequently leaving the park to residential areas of Kitengela and Ongata Rongai where he caused unnecessary panic, despite the efforts of the rangers to keep him in the park.

There was a very high likelihood that he would be poached as he was frequently near the fence-line. Besides, the likelihood of the rhino injuring or killing people could not be ruled out. Significant security resources were thus being diverted to protect a single animal.

Options Considered

KWS considered various options including placing him in the Safari Walk but there is already a rhino there.

Moving him to a fenced area such as Lake Nakuru National Park would have almost certainly led to him fighting with other dominant white rhino bulls or to him walking the fence-line once more (which would have meant that a number of KWS rangers would have had to walk with him, thereby being diverted from their wider duties).

Intense Rhino Poaching

The decision to send him to Kisumu Impala Sanctuary was guided by Kenya’s policy concerning the protection of white rhino, which is: to manage the species for community conservation, education and tourism and as a conservation resource for restocking white rhino ranges outside of Kenya.

KWS has a duty and a fundamental commitment to protecting and conserving Kenya’s wildlife heritage. However, inevitably there are certain individual wild animals that cannot be successfully returned to the wild, especially when they have been hand-reared, rescued or injured. KWS has genuinely evaluated the available options for this particular rhino but his previous history has made a wild life simply far too risky, particularly during these challenging
times when rhino poaching is so intense.

Welcome public participation

We appreciate the concerns for the rhino’s welfare that have been expressed and believe his relocation to Kisumu is in his best interests. Kisumu Impala is a welfare facility dedicated to the care of sick, injured and orphaned wildlife.

As a responsive public institution, we welcome stakeholders and the general public to raise whatever concerns they have on wildlife conservation with us.

Our doors are open for consultation as we discharge our mandate as provided by the law.

PAUL UDOTO
Corporate Communications Manager
Kenya Wildlife Service
communications@kws.go.ke
+254 20 2379407-15/ 0771 058006

Ocampo`s tour to Nairobi National Park accompanied by the Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo who also doubled up as his cicerone; elicited varied reactions from the fourth estate and by extension, the public.

For a moment I too thought that the Government had elected to give sop to Ceberius to secure a nod for the local trial of the Lords of Impunity behind the 2007 Post Election Violence (PEV). I waited with abated breath for the usual theatrics. I am certain that like me there are many others who shared this misgiving. Worry no more.

Belatedly, the reality of his tour to the park hit me like a thunderbolt. How could I have failed to unravel the powerful symbolism in this tour?

You see, Ocampo has spent a good part of his professional life taming individuals who know nothing other than the rule of the jungle. A Busman`s tour to a park where beasts of the jungle are tamed enabled him not only to horn his skills in taming them but also inspired him into buckling his armor in readiness to tame the real Kenyan Lords of the jungle; read the perpetrators of the 2007 horrendous Post Election Violence(PEV).

And sure enough, it was hot on the heels of his tour to the Nairobi National Park that his verbatim and body language caused hemi cranial headaches to many a suspect. He left no doubt that he had his hands firm on the plough. This is after he invoked Article 15 of the Rome Statute seeking ICC`s permission to commence investigations and prosecutions of crimes against humanity committed during PEV in Kenya. What this means is that Kenya`s case is almost certainly hermetically sealed. Sovereignty or not, the country will most certainly kowtow to ICC`s demands for the arrests of these suspects if and when need arises.

As for those who have been trotting from region to region purveying piles of hogwash about ICC`s inability to dispose timely justice, Ocampo has nailed your lies to the counter. Indeed Hague will not be vague. A rude shock awaits you in a jiffy.

Francis Tome
Bumula Constituency

Water and Irrigation Minister Charity Ngilu has been in the news a good deal recently.

First there were accusations of dams not being constructed and then of missing funds, followed by an amazing story that she was sabotaging another Cabinet minister by supplying too much water to his constituency. These were followed by a newspaper advertisement by her ministry to rebuff these reports.

Whatever the facts, and regardless of current Coastal flooding, we all know that clean water, delivered from a household tap, is a basic human right in the same way that earning enough money to buy food and sustain life is essential. Sewerage, also part of the Water minister's mandate, is equally important.

Water services are, or should be, a national priority and it is certainly not possible to blame the Ministry of Water and Irrigation for the destruction of the Mau water tower through massive deforestation, nor for the depletion of our lake levels. This must fall on the ministers for Environment and for Forests.

However, I note that little attention concerning water has touched on the Coast or Mombasa.

This seems strange, considering how the Coast Province historically languishes so far behind others in infrastructure and maintenance investments. Here are some of the facts.

The Coast water supply structures are ancient and dilapidated leading to leakages, with small-size pipes delivering low volumes of water that suffer immense vandalism by local communities. The Mzima Springs pipeline is over 60 years old, and although built from pre-stressed concrete suffers almost daily breaks and leakages.

Hamisi Mwanchai, chairman of the CWS Board, said theft and leakages are so bad that it is a miracle any water reaches Mombasa which relies primarily on sources from outside the island.

Mombasa's daily demand of 200,000 cubic metres of water cannot be fulfilled by the 130,000 cubic metres available from those surrounding districts.

As a result 35 per cent of households rely on groundwater sources such as wells and boreholes for their potable needs. A major challenge for Mombasa Island, therefore, is the impact of sewage on groundwater as residents sink their own boreholes due to the lack of council-supplied water.

Malindi has no sewerage treatment and of the two treatment plants in Mombasa, only the
Changamwe plant works and then only partially. It does not filter grey water after removing solids and there is no designated place for the sludge to be disposed of, leaving the ocean as the site for disposal.

There has been interference with pump stations with developers building over them. The location reserved for a treatment plant at Mkomani was sold to a private developer, hampering the intended development of a sewer system to serve the North Coast.

With various pump stations not working efficiently, the situation is critical but only temporary measures are in place.

Only one third of the total Coast region has sewerage system facilities, being a section of Mombasa City Council, and sections of Voi and Wundanyi because sewerage facilities were never planned.

Mombasa uses a sewerage system put in place many years ago. Most sewerage treatment plants do not function because they are either broken or there is no money to maintain them. In addition, a ballooning shanty-town population has virtually no sewage treatment while storm drain systems have been illegally converted for sewerage runoff.

It is proven that sewage is responsible for various water-borne diseases including cholera, dysentery, typhoid, diarrhoea, intestinal worms, diseases of the skin and eye infections.

Some years ago, a burst sewer line contaminated the main water supply causing an outbreak of cholera and typhoid with several reported deaths.

The entire Mombasa sewerage system is so old and dilapidated that repairs are no longer a valid option and a complete new system has to be designed.

The study for this has not yet started and the implication is that it will be many years before Mombasa has an acceptable sewerage system estimated to cost Sh20 billion.

No one understands the plan to reduce six local water companies to two when the six are considered ineffective. Why can we not solve problems rather than allow them to pile up?

An expanding tourism industry and the expanding Coast population of water consumers need effective decisions and strong leadership with an urgent realisation that the Coast and Mombasa water supply and sewerage are both in need of immediate attention.

Failure to act could lead to the Coast being shunned by investors and tourism suppliers alike.

Cleave is the acting chairman of the Kenya Association of Tour Operators.

We are all aware of the environmental disaster that is the Mau Forest, where not only the forest is threatened but also rivers, lakes and even wildlife reserves, including the world-famous Maasai Mara.

What is odd is that in environmental legislation, Kenya led the way in 1999 when it created the ground-breaking Environment Management and Coordination Act.

When it became law, I for one, breathed a big sigh of relief. At the time I was part of a vigorous effort by the Kenya Association of Tour Operators to get a moratorium declared on the increasing number of random and unplanned tourist camps and lodges in the Maasai Mara.

Prior to EMCA, if you wanted to put up a camp in the Mara you simply made a deal with the local Maasai community leaders, had a quick chat with the county council, and away you went. With the coming of EMCA in came the cornerstone of the whole environmental process, the Environmental Impact Assessment.

So why, despite EMCA, was there a new wave of development of camps and lodges not only in the Mara but around the country?

In the Mara alone, more than 60 new properties have been put up since 2004. And isn't this the time when the greatest acceleration of destruction took place in the Mau too?"

So it seems that rather than saving our environment, as I had hoped, EMCA and the EIA process look as if they are accelerating its decline. How can this be happening?

I chaired an environmental meeting two weeks ago at which I asked my fellow participants why it was that so many EIA licences seemed to be granted to outfits which hadn't even applied yet for a business licence or a PIN from the Kenya Revenue Authority?

In the earnest discussion that followed it emerged that many businessmen felt that applying for an EIA should be the first tick in the box, because if one failed to get it, why waste more money getting any other licences?

Secondly, what do you think of a process whereby the developer pays the "expert" who does the EIA proposals for him?

He or she doesn't pay the National Environment Management Authority, whose job it is to administer the act and approve an EIA proposal.

It stands to reason that if you're allowed to pay the piper he'll play any tune you want.

So why doesn't Nema have a list of approved and certified environmental "experts" that get paid to go out and do EIAs? That way the applicant doesn't get to choose which "expert" goes out into the field to do the EIA, and he doesn't get to influence the process by paying the "expert" directly.

Sounds simple? It is. But it's not what's happening. Nema is being inundated by EIAs written up by "experts", none of whom has a bad word to say about their proposed projects.

And, finally, why have a tribunal, which can issue stop orders against contested development projects only for the developer to appeal to the high court and nullify the order?

Yes, there should be the facility to appeal, but why is the stop order set aside? Hotels, camps, shops and malls are being completed whilst EIAs are contested in the high court.

Surely if we are all entitled to a "clean and healthy environment" under the act, stop orders by the tribunal should be maintained until final rulings are made, either by the high court or the tribunal.

Nema has a tremendous mandate to do good. However, if its fails us then they have the capacity to do us more harm than good.

Earnshaw is the chairman of the board ofKer & Downey Safaris.

Skal International is a global network of clubs for tourism executives and managers. The meaning of the word Skal is cheers or bottoms-up and the wine and whisky flows at their monthly luncheon or dinner meetings.

Skal clubs are about the tourism spirit of hospitality and therefore much loved.

However their slogan, complete with a white dove, "Tourism Brings Peace", is sadly wrong.

If true the slogan would be indeed wonderful as world peace could be won globally by everyone taking a holiday. Alas, the order of the words needs to be reversed to arrive at the real situation, which is that "peace brings tourism". If only governments valued peace more than election results!

Another global tourism network, the World Tourism Organisation, has managed their message much better with the WTO Global Code of Tourism Ethics. Based on years of distilled wisdom as the world tourism watchdog, the WTO states that tourism represents an opportunity to learn about other cultures and promote better understanding amongst mankind. The WTO champions the preservation of local culture, handicrafts and resists attempts to degrade or commercialise them.

All countries have something of culture and local entertainment. In England, to take one example of a typical Kenya Coast inbound source market; you may visit a theatre in many of the large cities, something the British have excelled at since before Shakespeare. Castles, ca-thedrals, abbeys, forts and other places of historical and cultural interest abound. Military parades are commonplace.

Go further north to Bonny Scotland and the cold may drive you indoors but there is one sure way to bring out the crowds regardless of the weather and that is tribal dance and war tradition. It may be a long time since tribes made war on each other in Britain but the swirl of the kilt, the crash of drums and the wail of the bagpipes still brings intense excitement as does the highland dance over crossed swords.

Traditional dance enthrals people everywhere and no less than in Africa, where overseas visitors long since detached from their own tribal dances, are fascinated to watch living tradition. Although a rapidly modernising country, we market tourism with scenes of Maasai warriors leaping vertically in war dance. The scope and variety of Kenya's tribal dancing is impressive and a hugely important heritage guaranteed to make a lasting impression on the minds of our visitors.

So why has Bomas of Kenya, operated as a government business unit to showcase our dance and music heritage to tourists in Nairobi, become such a failure and why is tribal dance reserved for visiting heads of state?

Nairobi has, admittedly, become inconvenient due to traffic jams and pedestrian congestion and visitors therefore escape Nairobi after one night in a luxury hotel, without tribal dance, to be whisked away to the peace and serenity of our beautiful wildlife parks and conservations.

However, more aggressive marketing by Bomas of Kenya would surely pay dividends with such a popular attraction.

Whatever the reason there exists an important but unfulfilled opportunity for the Bomas of Kenya to recover its pride by building a new cultural centre at the Coast. The situation there is quite different from Nairobi as tourism is out of town, and beach hotel guests stay one or two weeks within reasonable driving distance to visit a well marketed high quality cultural centre.

The Coast destination is the natural home for Bomas, being a mass charter market, where pre-packaged excursions are sold daily and Bomas will be booked day and night for infotainment that tourists are hungry for. The world loves song and dance and showcasing our local Swahili and other national cultures will be a winning formula.

Many beach hotels currently provide mini tribal commercial dance shows and will be relieved to return to what they do best, modern dance in their own discos with live modern bands. All this will raise entertainment standards and the range of attractions of a beach holiday with more diversified entertainment readily available, with tourists encouraged to go outside their hotels and spread their money around.

The new Coast Bomas can be built with funds provided by yet another dysfunctional tourism parastatal, the Kenya Tourism Development Corporation, recognised as going astray in entering into commercial enterprises.

The KTDC must sell all its assets to make money available for worthwhile tourism investments. Let us see it wisely spent on building a new Coast branch of Bomas of Kenya and expanding our conference and training facilities.

Cleave is the acting chairman of the Kenya Association of Tour Operators.

Lions, and other Big Five, used to stalk our land in great numbers and were treated as vermin and killed. In 1947 a pride of seven lions strolled across the Makupa causeway that links the mainland to Mombasa Island, and caused instant panic among town residents. A bank manager who owned a gun dispatched them.

Past reaction to dangerous wildlife was to kill them and, in an extreme example, the early colonial game department culled 163 rhinos in one year to clear a small patch of ground for sisal planting.

Sadly, our Big Five numbers have been reduced to dangerously low levels but we now have greater understanding of our moral responsibilities and take measures to protect them. The recent Pride of Kenya campaign advocated sensible measures such as banning Furadan that poisons innocent lions. With only 2,000 left in Kenya we are now obligated to safeguard their future, not only morally but because they are good for business.

Most overseas tourists live in countries that long ago exterminated their dangerous creatures and are willing to spend money and travel long distances to see wildlife in its natural state. However, they can also visit zoos at home and, if the game viewing experience in Kenya deteriorates to that of a zoo, they will stay away.

Regulatory protection under the Environment Management Act does not cover reserve and park management plans and neither does the new Tourism Bill, passing slowly through Parliament. Although it grants wide powers to the Minister of Tourism to protect designated areas, this is intended for monuments and archaeological sites.

The new Forestry and Wildlife Act is still in draft form, but carries the best future hope.

We may, however, have a long wait in a regulatory vacuum.

Meanwhile the clock is ticking. Kenya's population has increased from 5 million at first count to 40 million today. The larger population means a greater need of sustainable income from marginal land areas. The choice may be between agriculture and tourism. Where rainfall is unreliable, tourism may prove the most viable option, because the very rarity of wildlife has increased its value.

Land without farms, schools, clinics, houses and fences can be turned into private wildlife conservancies that create buffer zones and migratory corridors for species movement when adjacent to a national reserve. Due to their small size, the number of visitors to these conservancies must be controlled to prevent the zoo syndrome, hordes of safari vehicles around a single lion. The same is also true for our larger national parks and reserves.

Under a proposed new Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife Act, public and private wildlife conservation will benefit from clear guidelines. Conservation, by definition under the new bill, means the protection, maintenance, rehabilitation, restoration, management and wise use of wildlife.

The act neglects to define wisdom but does not allow non-nature based land use and prohibits all forms of consumption even though this could keep the ecosystem in balance and protect biological diversity. The draft bill, however, does require all public and private conservancies to have an ecosystem plan with a requirement that the opinions of other people in the area be discussed as new developments may adversely affect them.

This planning is currently sadly neglected and the National Environmental Management Authority has no guidelines of maximum beds per acre, does not consult widely with all other camps and lodges, and actually fulfils only a secondary requirement on responsible waste management for effluents and heating.

Many unscrupulous developers, however, now obtain a camp or lodge licence from Nema that would not be allowed under management plans in the new Wildlife Act and the current scramble to build, unethically supported by Nema, is turning our reserves into zoos.

All reserves and conservancies must now agree the number of beds per square acre and prevent overexploitation. Existing camps and lodges need to immediately form associations and protect their environment because the greed of commercial developers kills a conservancy as fast as a lion will eat a warden. Control of commercial exploitation is essential. Tourism is at risk because we have not sufficiently regulated our national reserves.

Although legally challenged by existing camps and conservationist, greedy developers have learnt to circumvent the National Environment Tribunal by steering preventative law suits at the high court, to be bogged down for years. In a legal vacuum the industry must quickly adopt voluntary limits and protect itself from the human predator.

Cleave is the acting chairman of the Kenya Association of Tour Operators.

Ginger beer and snails seem a comic mix of subjects but when combined, these humble ingredients created a legal chain reaction that, over time, modified our rights and continues to globally influence consumer protection today.

A manufacturer of ginger beer was held accountable in law to pay damages to a claimant who fell ill after drinking from a bottle she discovered contained the remains of a snail.

At the heart of this legal nicety is the discovery of an irreducible duty of care the average person owes to everyone else on the planet to be "reasonable" in actions and not cause foreseeable harm to another.

Tourists are vulnerable to duty of care and contract issues because they do not stay long, do not wish to waste holiday time confronting problems, are constrained by language differences, and heavily rely on local service providers to obtain the quality of service they expect in their home countries. Preventing problems before they occur is therefore central to sustainable inbound tourism.

Laws covering tourism services are contained in various Acts of Parliament and the new tourism bill, awaiting parliamentary approval, attempts to draw them together in one new bill. The tourism bill, however, focuses mainly on government authority and licensing requirements that for the most part are easily met.

The Tourism ministry has little oversight capability, few training facilities, or inspectorate outside the hotel industry and therefore relies on command and control laws in other sectors. These are not always enforced.

Only mandated membership in designated business member organisations with codes of practice, known as soft laws, can provide overall protection because code infringement results in loss of membership and loss of all tourism licences.

Mandatory membership in an association with soft laws does not infringe individual liberty and the first step towards ethical co-regulation, self-regulation and legal partnership is to link licensing to mandated association membership.

The right of free association and free speech are constitutional protection of individual rights under private law, but consumer protection falls to a sub-section of the constitution that governs relationships between individuals, citizens, companies and the state under public law.

Mandated membership of business associations have been upheld by the European Union and in Kenya, membership in the Kenya International Freight

Warehousing Association is mandated. The Kenya Revenue Authority does not issue a licence without membership.

Tourism Associations welcome mandated membership and those that do not must be hiding some form of oligarchy or monopoly. Self-regulation is about markets and mandated codes must include joining minima and an agreement that membership cannot be withheld provided the minimum joining standards are met. No one is locked out.

An example of enhanced tourist hotel protection is membership that requires a fire self-assessment risk certificate. No certificate, no membership. No membership, no licence.

Fire prevention inspections and the insurance industry will coordinate a process to prevent the continuous outbreak of fires on makuti-roofed tourist facilities at the Coast.

Another example under the code will be the introduction of a new law of tort for harassment to provide arrest of vendors not legally allowed to trade on beaches.

Beach vendors regard strenuous sale routines to be excellent merchandising, whereas overseas visitors regard them as hostile. The soft law leads to a new hard one in a beneficial social and legal relationship.

Another example, highlighted by the recent accidental death of a young British tourist while fishing is still under investigation, so no comment can be made, but it is known that the boat was not owned by a member of the Kenya Sea Anglers Association that has a code of ethics and conduct. Membership may have prevented such a sad occurrence.

An overarching code of practice for the industry is, therefore, desirable to provide high standards in all tourism activities. Soft laws are a social and legal engagement between business and government to add governance where it is needed.

Unscrupulous entrepreneurs are a drain on national resources and reduce credibility in the eyes of potential investors. In a country committed to eradicating poverty and becoming a semi industrialised state within 20 years we need to take these matters very seriously.

Tourism is a vital component of our economy and tourism business licensing linked to mandatory association membership will protect tourists, raise standards and enhance sustainability. This must now be incorporated in the new tourism bill before it is published.

Cleave is the acting chairman of the Kenya Association of Tour Operators.

LOCAL tourists are set to benefit from cheaper tourism packages next year in an initiative to be launched in November.

Tourism Minister Najib Balala said yesterday that his ministry is in consultation with stakeholders in the industry with the aim of coming up with ideas to make tours cheaper for locals, most of whom cannot enjoy safaris and other leisure activities due to high costs.

"We have declared 2010 the year of domestic tourism. We want to boost this area of tourism by encouraging intra-African travel and also make Kenyans understand that tourism is not just going to the beach or the Mara, there are other areas as well," Balala said.

To start off, the ministry wants school and university holiday schedules altered so that they do not coincide with the tourism high seasons as is the case currently.

"We want the Ministry of Education to consider changing the holiday months so that the students go for holidays during the low season because when the holidays coincide with the high season, hoteliers and tour operators cannot bring the price down," the minister said.

He however noted that the plan is at its initial stages and that Tourism ministry officials will be meet with their Education counterparts in the coming weeks to deliberate on the matter.

The two tourism high seasons in Kenya fall between the months of July to September and December to February. School holidays are in April, August and December.

The ministry has been allocated Sh30 million for domestic tourism in the current financial year and, according to Balala, part of the money will be used to market new tourism attractions like the Western circuit.

Balala said tourism is performing well having recovered very well adding that the industry is reaching the same profit levels of 2007, the most successful year. Sh62 billion profit was earned that year.

The minister note that the industry is promising citing the launch of new charter flights from Europe directly to Mombasa as a big boost.

The three flights from Brussels, Paris and Amsterdam will start operating between October and November.

Meanwhile Balala revealed that the newly appointed Managing Director of the Kenya Tourism Board shall report to office on 21st October because he was still finishing his contract at East African Cables Tanzania.