1st January 2013
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Editorial Cartoon
Bad weather, mainly in the form of severe drought and flash floods wreaked havoc in most of East Africa, with parts of Tanzania experiencing yet another period of erratic weather.
Yet what befell with respect to climatic conditions did not come as much of a surprise, as scientists have kept warning that Planet Earth was heating and worse was to come.
This has manifested itself partly in droughts maize, wheat and soybean prices registering rises in all but very few countries. Several UN organisations have warned that these price shocks might affect tens of millions people over the coming months.
Experts see Tanzania being especially vulnerable, at least going by recent increases in the prices of such major food crops as rice, maize and sorghum in the local market.
The bad weather being experienced now generally translates into the threat of food insecurity to the majority of our people, whose livelihoods heavily depend on agriculture – easily the most important pillar of the economy.
We do not intend to present an apocalyptic vision of how the country will look with the climate change the world is witnessing. On the contrary, we sincerely believe that it is not too late for us to mitigate the impact of these developments.
Another key challenge still hampering investment efforts in the country is unreliable and, indeed, inadequate power supply.
Efforts to boost supply have yet to bring the situation to anywhere near normal, and all sectors including manufacturing continue to experience frequent rationing –with power often being cut for long hours at the most awkward of times.
Unannounced power stoppages or interruptions as well as voltage fluctuations all lead to serious disruptions of service delivery and industrial production.
We may decide to blame these challenges on worn-out power generation and distribution infrastructure or on the fact that we depend too heavily hydro-production, which is prone to the vagaries of weather, but we all the same need to come up with a realistic and lasting way out of the mess.
The state-run Tanzania Electric Supply Company (Tanesco) looks so evidently underfed and overwhelmed that its plight ought to be taken up as a national emergency calling for an immediate solution if the national economy is to weather the storms of 2013 and beyond.
Year 2012 also saw a surge in cases of religious intolerance, if the burning of several churches in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar is anything to go by. Religious fundamentalism that threatens peace and harmony is simply unacceptable and should not be allowed room to rear its ugly head in Tanzania.
Nor should extra-judicial killings, be it by ordinary citizens or by law-enforcement agents gone mad. Rather, courts of law should be left to dispense justice without let or hindrance. Trouble is that there are also complaints about this recourse coming across all manner of stumbling blocks!
Law-enforcement agencies should feel obliged to live up to expectation by delivering on their core constitutional mandate of ensuring the rule of law and the maintenance of law and order.
Going by the plethora of allegations of inefficiency, corruption, abuse of power directed at those charged with law enforcement, reconstruction that would arrest the sad trend would be most welcome.
Corruption is one of the biggest problems is grappling with, and no amount of force will rid our country of the vice unless it is a war waged by the nation as a joint force. One only wishes 2013 made this possible – that Tanzanians in their millions will this time really walk the walk and take the bull by the horns!
There are as many suggestions on how to confront the cankerworm that corruption has become. When it comes to corruption, everybody is involved in that if you are not the giver or the taker, then you are an onlooker – and all three are guilty.
We wish you all a rewarding 2013. May these words by Oprah Winfrey fire us into positive action: “Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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