Isn't Dar a time-ticking bomb?

MBAGALA bomb blasts are still hogging headlines in our gaffe-and-flaw-prone hank. Also, Mengi-Rostam blasts are still hovering, not to mention Simba-Mkuchika thunders. Today I am not going to dwell on how Reginald Mengi culled five sharks from the ocean.

I’ll go straight to the basics. Tanzania is still gripped by the pangs and twangs of losing loved ones. Though this is wrongly said to be an accident, we’d not blame it on God but our archaic infrastructure and poor city planning and thinking.

Knives are coming out from the victims alleging that some unscrupulous government officials in the catbird seat are doing away with tents and mattresses meant to help victims! Others are saying that politics is also played when it comes to whom to serve first. What on earth have we become? Such corruption, for those with human consciousness, creates enough headaches to warrant seeing the doc to cough money for just seeing him; not to be given any medication.

This means, the government, whose name is currently mud, does not do its homework well despite being behind this entire calamity. Also it is said the number so given by the government regarding the deaths is dwindled.

Though we can rest assured that this will nary be repeated, we need to knock some sense and take bold actions reminiscent to averting yet another danger or dangers on a go-forward basis.

There are questions we need to address and arrest. Why should barracks be allowed near residences? And above all, why should bombs be stored in such areas knowing anything can happen as it did? We need to change the way we keep our weaponry by making the lives of our citizenry the first priority.

More so, though, it may be regarded as madness and moroseness, we need to think about doing things the other different way we’ve always maintained to avoid; to totally avoiding lawlessness and corruption.

For example, we’ve allowed so many bogus and greedy investors to build their factories in residential areas. Look at Karibu Textile and Murzah Oil. They’re in residential areas posing the same danger of what occurred in Mbagala, thanks to using dangerous chemicals.

We’ve so many telecommunication cancer-producing towers almost everywhere in our country. I remember the one I see at Mtongani in Kunduchi. It is killing many innocent Tanzanians!

There are Kurasini oil tanks. They’re, as well, but a ticking bomb, if we look at it without the inducements.
Going back to military hardware; we’ve Lugalo barracks. I don�t need to know what is in there. But looking at what occurred in Mbagala, one can comfortably smell a rat and predict the doomsday one day. Why don’t we move Lugalo barracks to some remote area in Bagamoyo as well as Mbagala?
After Lugalo there comes Ukonga Airbase and Mwl Julius Nyerere International Airport. My experience is that airports should be built away from city centre. Given that when JKIA was built as Dar was still a toddler, now it’s expanding. We too need to expand the way of looking at things and appreciate the danger it poses.

Also there are many substandard buildings waiting to fall on innocent residents, by-standers and whoever will be near when they crumble. On this, Kariakoo is a chief suspect thanks to having many houses built illegally or by means of inducements.

The epistle cannot end without pointing a finger on sealed fire lanes, sewages almost everywhere in Kariakoo. For the rust and greed for money; all fire lanes no longer exist! Greed and myopic landlords erected buildings on them so as to clog and suffocate the city. To do away from this, the city fathers need to close their eyes and order all clogged fire lanes be demolished.

I know how our rulers love Dar es Salaam . This blind love is the only obstacle for not moving to Dodoma that sunk a lot of taxpayer’s money. This being the case, why shouldn’t baste this by diversifying services? There’s a room for this save our myopia, unwillingness and laziness that curtails it so as to put our lives in danger’s path unnecessarily.

Otherwise, Dar is no longer Bandar ul salaam or haven of peace, but a time bomb especially in this time warp.
Source;Thisday May 13, 2009.