The following excerpts from posts made by SanParks management on the SanParks forum are placed here for your information and for an opportunity for us to respond as any attempt to do so on the SP forum has resulted in posts being deleted, threads locked and the poster receiving a permanent ban.
SANParks would also like to denounce attempts to swindle the public off their money using the SANParks' name. We have direct relationship with the various stakeholders including the Honorary Rangers and we do not need the middle man in any way. We therefore request members of the public to be aware of these unscrupulous outfits pretending to be concerned about the status of our conservation.
We have also noted attempts by the likes of Africa Wild (Aikona) requesting people to direct their complaints about the national parks to their forum, that is not a recognised SANParks forum and we cannot allow any misrepresentation of SANParks by this group.
Complaints should be lodged directly with SANParks as complaints collected through the third party creates wrong impressions and causes damage to the image of SANParks. Correct channels to follow when lodging a complaint can be found here.
We trust that this will reach you in good faith.
Kind Regards:
Reynold "Rey" Thakhuli
General Manager: Media Liaison and Stakeholder Relations
South African National Parks
Tel: 012 426 5170
Email: rey.thakhuli@sanparks.org
We heartily agree that there are just too many 'organisations' collecting money on behalf of anti-rhino poaching initiatives and are also concerned that some of these could well be of a fraudulent nature.
As you, our members are all aware, there have been many discussions and suggestions put forward by individuals on this forum as to how we as Africa Wild could make a contribution. After lengthy discussions we contacted two branches of the SanParks Honorary Rangers to get their most pressing requirements and it seemed according to them that radio communication for patrols was a pressing issue.
Instead of asking members for money we decided to hold a challenge whereby if certain tasks were carried out by those members going on the Africa Wild Adventure trip in August/Sept a monetary reward would be forthcoming to be used for the purchase of 2-way radios to be presented to the HR's for them to pass the radio/s on to SanParks for use in their/our fight against Rhino poaching.
There is absolutely nothing sinister in this initiative and everything has been documented on this forum, in the open for all to see since the inception of this initiative. At this point in time absolutely no money has changed hands, nor will it until such time as we have enough pledges to buy one radio and hopefully more.
There has never been any "misrepresentation" on behalf of AW with regards to the reporting of 'problems' within our National Parks. AW members (as is the case with SP Forum members by the way, but that's their problem) have often complained that their input falls on deaf ears and they seldom get responses from SanParks when using the official complaints channel. AW offered to take our members' complaints to the relevant responsible SanParks staff members in an attempt to get issues resolved, thereby bypassing the official channels which have an undeniable extremely poor track record.
Africa Wild has never regarded this as an attempt to place SanParks in a bad light, but rather to assist in resolving issues thereby making our National Parks, once again, places we can be proud of. In other words, it's not about the complaint or issue, but all about getting a speedy resolution thereby assisting Sanparks with their image. The fact that this is done for our members on our forum in a visible manner illustrates that we have nothing to hide and in our opinion, nor should Sanparks management hide complaints in an attempt to preserve their image. The successes experienced in our endeavours have been truly amazing as reflected by the comments on our Needs Attention topic.
If SanParks are concerned about their image, surely they should do something about it by being more forthcoming and treating 'complaints' with urgency and efficiency, but it seems that better results are obtained outside of the official channels.
