NP - Project Elephant a non-starter sans insurance

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*Project Elephant a non-starter sans insurance

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DIPENDRA BADUWAL

http://ekantipur.com/kolnews.php? & nid=207504

 

CHITWAN, Aug 2 - It seemed like a good bet at the time. Elephant safaris

were getting increasingly popular with the tourists who visited Chitwan, and

thus many tourism entrepreneurs and hoteliers plunked down huge amounts of

cash to buy elephants. They figured that including elephant rides in their

list of services would give their business a boost and they would be raking

in the rupees. But many hadn’t counted on their money-spinning beasts dying

an early death and the hit their business would take once the unthinkable

happened.

 

The gloom started to loom with the sudden death two years ago of famed

pachyderm Jung Bahadur, the two-time champion of the International Elephant

Race. With the animal’s death, entrepreneurs who had invested in elephants

came to the realisation that their investment could tank if their elephants

died before they had pocketed the returns.

 

An elephant can cost up Rs. 2 million rupees and above, and the

entrepreneurs realised that the only way to safeguard their investment was

to get the animals insured. Much to the great dismay of the elephant owners,

however, no insurance company in the country offered a pet-insurance policy,

let alone an elephant-insurance one. There are over 100 privately owned

elephants in Sauraha today, and none of them are insured.

 

“I’ve been trying hard to insure my other elephant, but to no avail,” says

Damodar Regmi, Jung Bahadur’s owner. “Even though I’m willing to pay a large

sum, no one is interested in my offer.” Ever since Jung Bahadur died some

two years ago, other elephant owners in Sauraha have also been pushing

persistently for the introduction of an insurance policy for privately owned

elephants. Besides knocking on the doors of various private insurance

companies, the owners have also taken their case to government ones.

 

“All we are asking for is that we be allowed to protect our investment,”

says Hari Bhakta Ghimire, chairman of the Regional Hotel Association in

Chitwan. “They have policies for cars and buses, but when it comes to

elephants, which cost as much as a car, they don’t want to offer coverage.”

The people on the other side of the argument believe that lack of precedence

is counter-claim enough. Bharat Malla, chief of Narayangadh-based NLG

Insurance, says that private insurance companies in the country have never

insured animals, and that “There is no such policy whatsoever as far as

private companies are concerned.”

 

Whatever precedence had been set before in similar cases is fast being

consigned to oblivion too. A few years ago, the government had launched a

livestock insurance programme that would protect the loans offered by

state-owned banks to farmers who wanted to invest in livestock. That

programme has now become obsolete. “Now, it’s all up to the government. Only

the government can devise an insurance policy for these elephants,” says

Malla.

Posted on: 2009-08-01 21:39:53 (Server Time)