Causes, losses and preventative measures of livestock theft on farmers in Omaheke Region of Namibia for (original) (raw)

2017, undergraduate mini-thesis

Abstract Results of the study on causes, losses and preventive measures of stock theft on farms in Omaheke Region of Namibia For 2016 N.T. Tjirimuje1, and A.S. Bishi2 1Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of Namibia, Namibia 2School of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of Namibia, Namibia *Author for correspondence Email: natangwetjirimuje@gmail.com; +264816607695 and abishi@unam.na; Tel: +264-61-2064158 Stock theft is recognised as one of the main causes of livestock loses in Namibia, besides infectious diseases, plant poisoning, drought and predation. The objectives of this study, which is being conducted in Omaheke Region, is to establish the underlying causes of stock theft, evaluate the effectiveness of law enforcement measures, estimate the monetary losses and recommend other preventive measures that can be applied to minimize the impact of the problem in the region. A questionnaire based survey was undertaken targeted at farmers and convicted offenders involved in stock theft. The questionnaire survey was completed for the convicted offenders at the Gobabis correctional facility in which 30 inmates were interviewed from a total 130. One hundred farmers were randomly selected and telephonically interviewed from a total of 9,885. Results from the farmers show that by proportion, sheep (58%) had the highest loss to livestock theft followed by goats (53%) and then the cattle (9%). This then confirms that small stock animals (sheep and goats) were frequently stolen than the large stock (cattle). Results of the interviews conducted with the prison inmates showed that poverty was cited by 43.3 % of the prisoners as the underlying cause of stock theft. Fifty percent (50%) of the prisoners were convicted for stealing sheep, 33.3% for goats and 16.7 % for cattle theft. The ages of the stock theft offenders ranged from 14 to 61 with a mean age of 26.8 (and a standard deviation of 11.0) and a median age of 25. Stock theft also affected farmers of all age groups of the interviewed farmers and with the age groups of 50-59 and 80-89 being affected the most out of the 100 interviewed farmers. The mean age was 59.71 was the median and mode ages were 60. The majority of the offenders (53.3%) believed that the best strategy to combat stock theft was to offer employment opportunities to them. While the farmers interviewed identified “individual criminals” acting alone as the main culprits (45.2%) of stock theft within the region and identified “other farmers” as the least (17.7%) suspects for stock theft within the region. Key words: Farmers, inmates, Omaheke, stock theft