Dar es Salaam. Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on Thursday, February 9, 2023.
Smallholders in Mbarali protest Govt plans to evict them from their land
A total of 852 smallholder farmers from Mbarali, Mbeya have filed a case in the High Court of Tanzania at Mbeya as they seek to prevent the government’s plans to evict them from their land.
Ezekia Kimanga and his 851 other applicants in the case are suing the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Land, Housing and Settlement Development (First Respondent) and the Attorney General (Second Respondent).
The applicants are villagers residing and engaging in agricultural activities within 23 villages situated in the Mbarali district which are Mahango, Mkunywa, Ikeha, Nyangadete, Magigiwe, Vikaye, Igunda, IvalanjiIkanutwa, Nyeregete, Mwanavala, Ibumila, Songwe, Warumba, Ukwavila, Kapunga, Iyala, Luhanga, Madundasi, Msanga, Simike, Kilambo and Udindilwa.
The move follows the pending expiration of the 90-day notice the applicants had served the government, informing it of their intention to seek a court’s intervention in the matter concerning the threat of eviction from their land.
Jebra Kambole, an advocate who is representing the applicants in the case, told The Chanzo on Tuesday that they have decided to sue the government because efforts to resolve the matter outside the court have failed to bear any fruit.
“This application is of extreme urgency as the government has prohibited the farmers from tilling their land which has already been cleared for cultivation,” Kambole noted during an interview.
“The farmers need to plant their seeds by latest mid of February 2023 and if they fail to do so in this rain season, they suffer poverty and hunger in the coming months,” added Kambole.
“Also, the intended eviction is about to be carried out at a time when villagers have not been shown, or allocated, any alternative places for the settlement by the government,” Kambole told The Chanzo. “This, in essence, reduces the status of these Tanzanian citizens to that of refugees in their own country.”
Efforts to get a comment from the Minister of Land, Housing and Human Settlement Development Ms Angelina Mabula bore no fruits on Tuesday after her phone went answered several times when contacted.
Dr Mabula also had not responded to questions The Chanzo sent to her phone number when this story was published.
Full story here.
‘They’re bought with money like candies’: Speaker Tulia breaks silence on honorary degrees
Speaker of Parliament Tulia Ackson on Thursday took issue with the growing tendency among some Tanzanians to buy honorary degrees from foreign institutions, saying the behaviour taints the image of Tanzania and demoralizes students.
The matter was raised in the ongoing parliamentary sessions in the capital Dodoma on Thursday by some Members of Parliament who sought the government’s clarification on whether the honorary degrees that have been granted to some Tanzanians recently were authentic or not.
Minister for Education, Science, and Technology Prof Adolf Mkenda responded by noting that the government examines people’s degrees only upon being requested to do so, pointing out that as far as the honorary degrees by some people, including MPs, are concerned, no one has requested the government to investigate their authenticity.
But Speaker Tulia said that although the government is not showing interest to investigate the honorary degrees granted to some Tanzanians, the behaviour does not send a good message to followers of Tanzania’s affairs as well as the country’s students.
“We are lowering our respect as a nation, especially in the area of education,” Tulia, herself a PhD holder, told lawmakers in Dodoma. “We are also disrespecting our people who are being awarded those honorary degrees deservedly.”
Full story here.
Zanzibar set for first tourism investment summit
Zanzibar President Hussein Mwinyi is expected to officiate the opening of the archipelago’s first tourism investment summit which is slated for February 23 to 24 at Zanzibar’s Airport Golden Tulip Convocation Centre.
Branded as “The Z Summit,” the summit is expected to bring Zanzibar tourism stakeholders together with the target of connecting tourism investors from East Africa, Africa, and other tourist market sources in the world.
Organized jointly by the Zanzibar Association of Tourism Investors (ZATI) and Kilifair, tourism exhibition organizers in Northern Tanzania, the 2-day event will be coloured with tourist exhibitions expected to attract over 100 exhibitors mostly from high-class tourist hotels, resorts, airlines, banks, and adventure companies.
Over 200 travel agents from all over East Africa, Europe, and other parts of the world are expected to participate in the grand event, reports suggest. A series of seminars and tourism investment discussions and business interactions will also highlight the event.
The Z-Summit is expected to attract and then bring together business executives from top-class hotels, lodges, and resorts mainly from Zanzibar, along with tour operators as well as excursion and water sports companies.
Other participants include tourism suppliers, airlines, banks, insurance companies, hospitality and tourism colleges, travel magazines, and media outlets.
Another road accident kills 12 dead in Dodoma
At least 12 people died and 63 others were injured on Thursday following a deadly accident which involved an up-country passenger bus and a lorry at Silwa Pandambili village in Kongwa along the Dodoma-Morogoro highway.
Kongwa district commissioner Remidius Mwema Emmanuel confirmed the news while speaking to The Chanzo on Thursday, naming the source of the accident as an attempt of the bus driver to overtake a lorry carrying livestock without noticing the one carrying sand that was coming its way.
The deadly crash occurred early Thursday at around 12 midnight. The bus owned by Frester Bus Company was travelling from Bukoba to Dar es Salaam.
Eyewitnesses around the area said the bus driver was trying to overtake another bus recklessly and caused the accident.
The accident comes within a week of another accident that killed 17 people and injured 12 others when a commuter bus transporting mourners to Kilimanjaro to burry their kin collided with a lorry at Magila Gerezani, Segera in Korogwe, Tanga.
The horrific accident occurred at around 4:30 am with the high speed named as the source of the accident. The lorry driver caused the accident as he blindly decided to overtake another vehicle.
According to the Global Status Report on road safety by the World Health Organisation (WHO), road accidents account for 6.12 per cent of total deaths in Tanzania, with an actual count of around 18,054 deaths per year.
Tanzania also loses approximately 3.4 per cent of its GDP in caring for traumatised victims and burying casualties, according to analyses by the Global Road Safety Partnership (GSRP) and the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC).
Travel agents explore Tanzania’s tourist attractions
A group of 17 tourist agents, from North and South America, as well as Portugal have been in Tanzania where they visited some of the country’s most prominent destinations as part of the East African nation’s to market itself internationally.
The Tanzania Tourism Board (TTB) said the trip was aimed at familiarising the agents with Tanzania’s tourist attractions, which it is anticipated they would in their packages.
Damas Mfugale, the newly-appointed Director General of TTB, and Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resource and Tourism, Prof Eliaman Sedoyeka, welcomed the agents from Argentina, Brazil, Portugal and the United States at a business-to-business (B2B) meeting at the Gran Melia hotel in Arusha.
Prior, they arrived at the Kilimanjaro International Airport aboard Qatar Airways.
The group visited the Ngorongoro Crater and Serengeti National Park. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti are protected areas and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites.
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