EDITORIAL: A WELL EQUIPPED TMA CAN ONLY BE GOOD FOR US ALL

The Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) has signed an agreement with the American firm Enterprise Electronics Corporation (EEC) for the purchase of two state-of-the-art satellite weather radars as part of wider efforts to bolster the agency’s operations in the country.

After the two new radars have been installed in the metropolises of Dodoma and Arusha, that should bring the number of TMA’s satellite weather radars in Tanzania to seven.

This is taking into account three radars which are already installed – and are operational – in Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Mtwara, as well as two more which are in the final stages of being installed in Mbeya and Kigoma regions.

The new rotating radars from the US have the technology that can cover a weather forecasting and data collecting radius of up to 450 kilometres.

To that end, TMA and EEC have signed a deal under which the latter will supply and install the radars in Tanzania, as well as provide training to Tanzanians on their proper use.

As we reported yesterday, the government has allocated $4.99 million (roughly Sh11.4 billion) for purchasing the two new radars and training Tanzanians on their proper operation, as well as for repairing/updating the other radars already in the country.

If nothing else, this should go far in enabling TMA to fulfil its avowed mission of “providing quality, reliable and cost-effective meteorological services to stakeholders’ expectations – thereby contributing to the protection of life, property and the environment, as well as (attaining) the national poverty eradication goal”.

Indeed, the Tanzania government, TMA and the Enterprise Electronics Corporation of Alabama are collaborating on functional weather prediction, whose main goal is to provide information which can be used to reduce weather-related losses.

This more often than not goes far in enhancing societal/communal benefits, including ensuring public health and safety, as well as effectively supporting economic prosperity – and, therefore, the quality of life.



A PROBLEM WE CAN’T IGNORE

The children who roam the streets of Tanzania’s major urban centres – including Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Arusha – project an image of not just broken families, but a broken society that considers these underprivileged young ones none of its business.

For example, Mwanza, a city with a population of 700,000, has 2,500 street children. They roam the streets begging, doing menial jobs like washing cars. These should be in school, and those who are under seven should be at home with their parents.

Such children are desperate. They need help, but giving them alms and a little cash for cleaning windscreens cannot be of much use to them. These children need to be reunited with their families; they need a home; they should be put in school if they are to have any meaningful future.

That is where efforts should be directed to. If we don’t do that, street children will grow up into street adults who are likely to evolve into unsociable elements that are danger to themselves and the whole society.

Let us aspire for a Tanzania without street children.