Air fares down as Fastjet flies to Nairobi-Kenya

FASTJET has expanded its pan-African network with daily direct international flights from Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro to Nairobi, and daily domestic flights from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar. Fastjet inaugural flights from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, Kilimanjaro to Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar all took off on Monday, January 11, 2016, marking an important milestone in Fastjet’s international and domestic route expansion. The daily return flights to Zanzibar are expected to make it easier for more Tanzanian and international visitors to travel to Zanzibar, boosting tourism and business and contributing significantly to the Spice Islands’ economic growth. The launch of Fastjet flights to Nairobi from two of Tanzania’s busiest airports kick-starts a new era of choice for passengers who have suffered prohibitively high fares on flights between two of Africa’s fastest growing economies. 

The impact of Fastjet flights into Kenya has already been considerable, demonstrated by the fact that fares with competing airlines flying between the two countries suddenly dropped by as much as 40 per cent on the day that Fastjet announced that it would commence flights between Kenya and Tanzania. “The fact is that competition is good for consumers. It brings choice and it brings air fares down,” says John Corse, Fastjet General Manager for Tanzania. The airline expects to add more flights to its new Kenyan routes as consumer demand increases for its service, and it has already indicated that it expects to launch flights between Zanzibar and Nairobi as well as Dar es Salaam and Mombasa later in 2016.

Govt to increase produiction of Intravenous Fluids (IV)-drips

THE government plans to produce Intravenous Fluids (IV)-drips in its major hospitals countrywide, the Minister for Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, Ms Ummy Mwalimu, has said. The minister made the remarks on Monday this week during a visit at the IV production plant at St Joseph Hospital in Peramiho, Ruvuma region. “I do not see why the hospitals should continue to import the IVs when we have the capacity and expertise to produce them for local use,” she explained. The drips have numerous benefits to patients, including rehydration, after being dehydrated from illness or excessive activity. Others include antibiotics to treat an infection; chemotherapy drugs for cancer treatment and medications for the treatment of pain. The drips are also used during operations of patients. Rate and quantity of intravenous fluid depends on medical condition, body size, and age. Regulation ensures the correct amount of fluid drips from the bag down the tube into the vein at the correct rate. In another development, the Medical Stores Department (MSD) is in its final preparations to start manufacturing medicine and medical equipment in partnership with the private sector. 

Tanzania's Minister for Health Ummy Mwalimu at a press conference in Dar es Salaam recently

The objective is to enhance service delivery and reduce shortages of medicine in the country as well as medical equipment. MSD Director General Mr Laurean Bwanakunu said the tendering process to get an expert consultant has already been announced and that the process will be completed this month. Mr Bwanakunu said MSD currently imports 80 per cent of medicine and medical equipment due to low manufacturing capacity of local companies. “Because we import a large amount of drugs and medical equipment, we are forced to have big spaces to store them,” the MSD director general said. Speaking on labeling of drugs, Mr Bwanakunu said the MSD started labeling all drugs and placed a mark on each packet with a sign ‘GOT’, meaning Government of Tanzania in the financial year 2013/14. He said the sign is on all drugs, including tablets and medical equipment, all aimed at controlling the drugs and equipment from ending up in private drug stores. “Previously, we used to label the packages of the drugs and medical equipment with ‘MSD’ sign; but this would not guarantee control of the medicine from getting into private drug stores,” he explained. He said currently, 80 per cent of the drugs and medical equipment have been labeled with the GOT sign while those supplying the MSD with drugs have been directed to do the same. “Until June this year, all medical supplies will have been marked with MSD and GOT signs,” he explained.

Govt insists cultivation of drought-resistant crops in food shortage plagued areas

Tanzania government has urged its citizens particularly those affected by food shortages to plant drought resistant crops including sorghum and millet.  Director of the Department of Disaster from the Office of the Prime Minister, Brigadier General Mbazi Msuya made the call on Tuesday this week when speaking to Iguluba and Mkulula villagers of Malengamakali Ward, Isimani Division in Iringa Region. Brigadier General Msuya said the government will give the citizens sorghum seeds free of charge to plant this season. The Director of the Department of Disaster and his delegation were in the district to assess the state of food insecurity. While there, he reassured the citizens of government support. “No citizen will die of hunger,” he pledged. Brigadier General Msuya and his team also witnessed distribution of relief food to households affected by food shortage in the Igingilanyi village and said the government is aware that food was not enough to cover all needs and pledged to bring more. Over 70,000 people Iringa District face food shortages caused by low rainfall last season. While they thanked the government for the relief food, many asked for dams to enable irrigation farming for watering the promised drought resistant seeds. Recently, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa reassured citizens that Tanzania has enough food reserves to provide relief food if need be. “Nobody will starve, relief food will be available to feed all in need,” said Majaliwa at the start of the week when he inspected the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) in Songea as part of his recent official visit to Ruvuma Region. He said the government through the Disaster Management Unit has put in place strategies to respond to any hunger threat in areas that suffer food shortages. “As government, we are aware that there are areas which are in need of relief food. I can assure you all that nobody will die of hunger,” the Premier said. “This is my responsibility to ensure that I supervise this exercise, I have seen the status of our food reserves and we have enough maize stock, though the storage isn’t enough,” admitted the PM. Worth noting is the fact that Songea has six of the country’s 33 silos.

Dar city is ashamed with chronic with uncollected filthy

Some key areas of the country’s Dar es Salaam Central Business District  had got back  again to unhygienic conditions, only a month after President Dr John Magufuli and Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa led the nation in a countrywide clean-up operation. Despite promises by local government leaders and business owners to make cleanliness a culture, major markets and streets remain full of garbage and the drainage systems are clogged more or less the same way they were before the December 9 exercise. A spot check carried in places like Kariakoo and Tandale markets in Dar es Salaam suburban has revealed that there are lots of uncollected filthy in these areas despite traders and local government leaders who swore in the presence of journalists’ cameras that will they never again allow garbage to pile up, have apparently failed to keep the promise. The survey at Kariakoo in particular which is the city’s biggest and busiest shopping suburb, where Prime Minister Majaliwa led the exercise on Independence Day, the situation is very pathetic although thrilled traders promised to embrace cleanliness has relapsed to its filthy and stench past. It’s blame game at the market as leaders complain about shortage of funds, while traders on the other hand accuse leaders of collecting fees from them daily without making any sanitation improvement and garbage collection in the market.  Interviewed health and hygiene manager at Kariakoo Donald Sokoni admitted that sanitation in the area as expected earlier has not improved enough. He detailed that, the market is currently experiencing a huge financial deficit to facilitate rehabilitation of its drainage systems to allow smooth flow of waste water. “The revenue which is collected in the market does not satisfy the entire market needs specifically on the rehabilitation of the infrastructures,” he explained. A huge percentage of the budget being collected from the market is allocated to staff salaries, health services, and payment to contractors, while the rest is forwarded to the government - the owner of the market.  “We made efforts to implement several orders given out by Prime Minister Majaliwa when he visited the market place, that included renovation of public toilets and to install an air cooling machine in the market,” he said. “However, we fail to proceed with other improvements for cleanliness due to budget constraints,” Donald said. 

Donald went on to say that, the market still relies on a single income source which is sales commission fee charged to traders daily…the amount which is not enough at all,” he said. According to him, the market collected about 458m/- in the last quarter from July to September last year, but the amount couldn’t enable the authority to carry out improvement of the infrastructure.  “The major challenges facing the market is the huge number of more than 120 employees - the number which consumes a substantial amount of budget collected from traders,” the manager detailed. He explained that; when they met with Prime Minister Majaliwa in December last year, he advised them to formulate Kariakoo Cooperate Market Board to help solve the existing challenges. For his part, Business Officer Vedastus Valentine said the market operates with a huge amount of levy that goes un collected from goods brought to the area. He said, the market was suspended from receiving huge trucks of crops weighing more than five tonnes as per the Tanroads order that restricts entrance of such vehicles to the facility. “This has reduced the capacity of levy collection in the market, and as a result the market currently operates under loss,” he explained. Commenting, potato trader Hamidu Salehe said there is slow pace on part of the management to adhere to the Prime Minister’s order on ensuring sustainable cleanliness. “They did a small cleaning for two to three days after the campaign was initiated just because they were pushed by the Prime Minister, but from that period onwards, the situation in the market has reverted to its previous state. “We cannot expect changes if we continue like this, we need to see strong mechanism that shall make leaders be accountable to their required duties,” lamented the trader. Bakari Alex, a banana trader said: “We have not yet witnessed changes on the improvement of hygiene in the market, despite the fact that we are charged a big fee daily unlike other markets in the city. Alex said, most traders in the market have stopped from operating business in the market due to the high amount of fees charged by the management. “Indeed, we are forced to upload our trucks to other market and pick little of the commodities to the Kariakoo Market,” he said, adding that it poses huge challenges to them.

Tigo award winner promises to engage in the fight against child labour malpractices

ABOUT a month ago, innovative entrepreneurs over the use of digital technology witnessed a wonderful event of the human change of lifestyle when the innovative telecom company in the country, ‘Tigo Tanzania’ awarded two social entrepreneurs who emerged winners of its annual ‘digital change makers’ competition of the year 2015. It was really an exciting event which was graced by Swedish Ambassador accredited in the country Ms. Katarina Rangnitt. The Ambassador, who took part to award 20,000 US Dollar to each winner as a guest of honour at the occasion, also thanked Tigo for the initiative it has taken towards alleviating poverty by empowering entrepreneurs in the country. Among the two winners is Bihaga Edward, who resides from Kigoma region where he works with Umoja wa wawezeshaji KIOO as the executive director, and another one is Neema Shosho. Each one of whom came out with an innovative idea that impressed the jurists in a panel prior to their selection that made them emerged winners.  Umoja wa wawezeshaji KIOO, abbreviated as KIOO is a voluntary non-governmental, non-political, non-religious, and non-profit sharing organization that was established in 2001 and officially registered in 2004 under the Societies Ordinance of 1954 with certificate of registration number S.O. 12793.  The organization’s mission is to promote and protect human rights of the poor and marginalized groups, especially women and vulnerable children and improving sustainable community development.  According to Edward, KIOO is the philosophical word that means “something which someone can make reflection and hence make changes”. He says more than 10 years his firm has been working with the community to raise awareness mostly in areas whereby children rights are neither valued nor cared. In line with this, he has dedicated himself to work against child labour by giving awareness through digital means in Kigoma region where children aged between 7 and 17 years are exposed to child labour from Uvinza district contrary to Child Act No 21 of 2009. In an exclusive interview, Edward confirmed that most children are made to work and used as cheap labour in the fishing camps and tobacco farming areas for no reasons, while those who employs them knows that are doing mistakes as stipulated in Child labor laws. Elaborating on the ways through which he could manage his work Edward said that, “his project on the awareness of the problem of the child labour to the community would be disseminated in three major ways”. “This project has three components basing on the awareness rising as a way to bridge the gap of ignorance”, he said adding that this will be done by sending short messages through mobile phones and supplying “MP3” as a digital innovation. Through this digital innovation, he says he will ensure that all education materials on child labour are converted into audio form to be used into MP3 format that may be used into radio and mobile phone that will enable the affected household to listen while working or resting before bedtime. The information will be encouraging family members and change their attitude and refrain from sending their children to work as such incidences are harmful to them. He further noted that, there will also be some radio programs where community members will be allowed to ask question and get answers from different stakeholders that will be invited to talk about child labour in special programs prepared to enlighten the community on various effects resulting into child labour. “In that way I hope that more people will be impacted with the digital means”, he affirmed. The target audiences envisage to impact with this project with MP3 audio materials will be given to the selected household with children in labour so that they may be listened by them before bedtime. Others would be local government to advocate for law enforcement and community at large. Moreover in every selected village there will be a station where a radio with ability of using ‘MP3’ will be kept to enable more community members to listen to information that have been converted into audio form. He further noted that, in every village there will be a child labor monitor that will be identified from community members themselves who will have responsibility of monitoring what is going on at grass root level. According to him, these are child labour monitors who will have to monitor and report through the given mobile phone, their reporting will be through structure and unstructured “SMs” that will have to be sent by them to the established data base to be analyzed for further action. Describing about how child labour is enforced in rural communities, he noted that this due to economic reasons as many families are looking for the ways on how they could survive and have better life like other individuals in the community. He says that, one component which drivers the notion in an extreme level is lack of women economic empowerment. According to him most of the families with children that involve in forceful labour are coming from women headed families even those who are men headed still women are playing a great role. Family members are using children to substitute their income not because they desire to do so but because there is no alternatives to help their beloved children. In that way empowering women economically with skills to run small business in their area will reduce burden to children of being used as substitute for family income. This will be done by taking all women from the identified household within the respective village and group them into production groups that would help them generate incomes with a view to alleviate them from abject poverty levels. The groups he mentioned are such as VICOBA through village banking education, after a while they will be given a start-up capital through the revolving funding that is going to be initiated by the project where any transfer to and from a group will be done through mobile money transfer (Tigo pesa) as a digital innovation. Edward mentioned the last component will be vocational, business and entrepreneurship trainings at Ilagala education and vocational training centre that is owned by his organization. Here also there will be two categories of children. He clarified that, the first group will be all children with school age that has dropout from school, these will be rejoined back to school and given all necessary support for them to stay at school. The second group is all children that are out of school age that will join their education and vocational training centre for vocational, business and entrepreneurship skills indifferent aspects depending to their desire. Commenting on how serious the issue of child labour in Tanzania is, Edward noted that, it s a worst form of human activity which is an exploitative that harms children and affects their growth and physical development.  Outlining on the main causes, he noted that there are numerous reasons but the most basic ones includes deaths of parents whereby the remaining members of the family do not take care of the orphans, who in turn tend to seek for their own livelihoods by engaging in illegal labour. Extreme poverty at household level is another cause, in this the family are not able to provide all requirements to their children as a result children are used as substitute to income, children are forced to work in either fishing camps or tobacco farming for that they can earning income that will contribute to welfare of the family. Ignorance of policies, laws and convention that safeguarding the wellbeing of a child as signed and produced by the government. All of these important documents are paper work and they are not available at grass root level as a result the financial power people use this as a weakness and using children as their cheap labour. With all these mischiefs, Edward is appealing to the government to be so serious with the issue and take necessary steps to save the unprivileged groups most of which are subjected to child labour malpractices. “For the government I ask them to enforce laws for the betterment of our future generation, they should also look on how they can support this movement of information dissemination so that more people country wide may be reached. Some of conflict laws about child and working ages should be worked upon.