By Amos Kareithi
Owners of motor vehicles will now no longer have the sole preserve of holding a logbook to prove ownership of their property.
An ambitious project aimed at taming cattle rustling in parts of northern Kenya has come up with registration numbers and ‘logbooks’ for livestock.
Just like a vehicle has registration plates reading ‘KBK 00…something’, cattle registered under this project will be branded with numbers that start with letter ‘K’ for Kenya.
The registration number, details of the owner and place of origin will be compiled in a Government registration book at the district headquarters and owners given a small ‘log book’ (registration book) to prove ownership.
When selling off their animals, the owners will have to hand over a registration certificate to the new owner and have the ownership records changed in the Government book, just as it is done when a car changes hands. The process is registered by chiefs and forwarded to the district headquarters and to the district veterinary officers.
Registration number
One cattle owner will have one registration number and book covering all his cows, camels and donkeys. Goats are not included due to their high population.
A herder found with a cow in Isiolo District but bearing the registration number of Samburu District which bears a code ‘S’, would be asked to show its registration transfer card.
Slaughter houses in the affected regions will be expected to keep records and dates of cows they slaughter and show them in case they are demanded.
The registration details of cars are painted on metallic plates but the numbers of cattle are branded with a red-hot metal rod. The exercise in several trading centres in Samburu District last week left the air smelling of burnt hair as hundreds of lives locked in pens and seared on the upper side of their hind quarters, leaving fresh, raw imprints. They later heal and leave permanent marks on the skin.
Insecurity
Faced with ever-spiralling insecurity fuelled by cattle rustling, the Government is facilitating the process of branding and registering all livestock animals in affected areas to make tracking easy when they are stolen.
The idea of branding, registering livestock that is now in the pilot stage was first floated in Baringo District in 2007.
“Baringo residents then would hear nothing of it. They thought that the Government wanted to register their animals so that they would later be forced to pay tax based on the numbers,” says the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Livestock Development Mr Ken Lusaka.
Lusaka says pastoralists later begged the Government to brand their animals after some security agents from Uganda patrolling the border started seizing animals crossing from the Kenyan side that had no brand marks.
The Ugandan authorities had carried out a similar exercise on their side of the border and wanted to mop up all the unbranded livestock roaming across the border.
“The Kenya livestock owners have now realised the importance of branding and registration exercise and have been cooperating with our officers who have been going round implementing the exercise,” Lusaka said.
The painstaking exercise, which will take a long time to execute, has already started in parts of Trans Nzoia, Turkana, Samburu, Trans Mara, Mt Elgon, Baringo, West Pokot, Marakwet and Marsabit Districts. Other areas where the branding is underway are Moyale, Isiolo, Tana River, Laikipia, Kuria and Keiyo. Over two million livestock have already been branded and registered at a cost of Sh178 million, said Lusaka.
The drive to brand cattle is done in coordination with the Institute of Security Studies (ISS) and the East Africa Police Chiefs Organisation, EAPCO, which spearheads methods of battling crime in the East African Region and the Horn of Africa.
EAPCO was formed in Uganda in February 1998 to fight transnational and organised crime. It brings together police chiefs from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
International protocol
The regional organisation has been instrumental in the drafting an international protocol on combating, prevention and eradication of cattle rustling in Eastern Africa.
On the other hand, the ISS, which has also been advocating branding and registration of livestock envisages a time when all animals will have something akin to a passport or an identity card.
The ISS provided financial and technical assistance until the protocol was signed in 2008 in Addis Ababa.
EAPCO in collaboration with the ISS is implementing the Mifugo Project whose mandate is to facilitate the signing, ratification and implementation of the protocol.
Article 6 of the protocol is on livestock identification systems and record keeping its main aim is to elaborate a sustainable regional standards system that each member state can adapt and domesticate.
Lusaka confirmed the Government is receptive to the idea of issuing passports or identity cards to cows, camels and donkeys in the third phase of the branding and registration exercise. The registrar of brands, Dr Bernard Moenga, who is also a Deputy Director of Veterinary services told The Standard the process of branding and registration, indicating the district and location of the animal will be continuous. Each calf will be registered and branded at birth and the records retained by chiefs and the area veterinary officers.
Moeganga says some of the clauses in law will have to be amended to recognise some of the technological developments currently not recognised by the law which was last revised in 1972.
Source: The East African Standard
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