Ilala municipal council starts to implement JK’s orders

THE Mayor of the Ilala Municipal council in Dar es Salaam region Jerry Slaa has issued 14 ultimatum days to municipal councilors in order to ensure that, they submit the recommended names to be given to the designated streets found within their wards. The call by the mayor comes few days after President Jakaya Kikwete ordered executives of the three municipal councils in Dar es Salaam region to properly realign and name the streets within their suburbs so as to pave an easy way for the facilitation of the postcode project which is to start soon in Dar es Salaam region. The President issued the order in Dar es Salaam during the inauguration ceremony of the postcode project inn Dar es Salaam region to be carried out and coordinated by the Tanzania Communication Regulatory Authority (TCRA). In order to implement the President’s move, the Ilala mayor has directed his councilors to collect the most appropriate chosen names to be discussed during normal councilors’ meetings after which the work of deploying such names will follow afterwards. Mayor Slaa issued the directives at a closing session of a two day annual councilors’ general meeting which was held on Friday last week in Dar es Salaam.

Mayor of the Ilala Municipal Council, Mr. Jerry Slaa, the youngest mayor in the country

He said that, councilors will propose the most appropriate familiar names with the ward development committees then will discuss them and select the most suitable street names as one way to comply by the President’s insistence which runs alongside with the installation of postcode system whose project preparation is ready in place. The majority of people in Dar es Salaam city however, live in slum areas which have no streets let alone street names. “Providing house numbers and codes to areas such as Manzese, Buguruni, Vingunguti, Tandika and Mbagala is likely to be a challenge”, says an official of the city planning dept who preferred anonymity when contacted for comment. Statistics by the office of the city mayor, Dr. Didas Masaburi shows that, about 70 percent of all city dwellers are located in unplanned settlements, the areas which are presumed to have a big challenge in order to ensure the success of the project. On January 18th 2012, Tanzania adopted a ‘Numerical’ postcode system, which has been piloted in Arusha and Dodoma municipalities whereby 5,000 and 7,500 houses have been installed with postcodes respectively since 2008. The local Postcodes or Zip codes will be numerical as opposed to the ‘Alpha-Numerical’ method. The former is widely used globally. Arusha city has spearheaded the country for being the first urban center to establish the new Postcodes based street, house and personal identification system. The Minister for Communication, Science and Technology Prof. Peter Msolla said recently the five-year project would greatly improve local postal and dispatch services. The Minister explained that the 20 billion worth of a project will be carried out in two phases with the first (2009-2011) tailored to cover major towns and cities while the second (2012-2015) is expected to cover rural villages and unplanned settlements in urban centers. Postal services according to TCRA officials have their own formats and placement rules for postal codes. In most English-speaking countries, the postal code forms the last item of the address, following the city or town name, whereas in most continental European countries it precedes the name of the city or town.  During the inauguration of the project in Dar es Salaam recently, the President’s residence of the State House was given No 1 Ocean Road, 11400 Dar es Salaam with his call that the project is vital in boosting the city as a tourist destination as well as business activities. Dar es Salaam has so many tourist destination centres, but to the great dismay most of these have not been reached due to lack of postcode. The Nation’s first Postcode address is ‘1 Boma Street. 23100 Arusha’, which was earlier assigned to the Arusha Head Post Office building in 2008 when the project started. The location of an area is adjacent to the Clock-Tower junction. This was officially launched by the then Vice-President, Dr Ali Mohammed Shein.