An evaluation of the animal act no.27 of 2010

Abstract

Owing to a number of disease outbreaks in the past years which has had a serious effect on the country's economy due to ineffectiveness ways of implementation of the laws governing animal health in the country. The government from 1996 embarked on reviewing the regulations to come up when news laws that will encompasses modern problems. The Animal Health was enacted in the year 2010 to repeal and replace the Stock Disease Act of 1961. The focus of this dissertation is to evaluate the laws regulating animal health in the recent past. There has been a problem of unfettered powers of the Director and the government not awarding compensation to the livestock farmers whose livestock has been slaughtered. These farmers lose their only means of livelihood without being compensated. The constitution under Article 16 provides for compensation if the government takes away their property. In instances where it is granted, it is either less than the value of the animal or the process of determination is inappropriate. The dissertation tries to assess the feasibility of the government awarding it to farmers. The methodology that was used was primary information which was obtained from interviews with various stakeholders and also secondary information from the internet. It was found that under the Act, there has been a problem of policy making by the policy-makers which does not reflect the aspiration of the people and also lacked guidelines on how to implement them. There is no provision on how to award compensation, further some of the provisions under the Act created confusion on who is to perform which function. Due to the fact that the majority of the population is illiterate, there is no initiative to educate them by the government. This has been a major setback to the implementers in controlling or eradicating the notifiable disease in the country.