HEED PROF KABUDI, TMA ON TREE-FELLING AND DROUGHT
The Member of Parliament for Kilosa in Morogoro Region, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi, has sternly admonished villagers in the area against wanton tree-felling – and should, instead, take up tree-planting with vengeance, proverbially-speaking.
Prof Kabudi – who is also the Constitution and Legal Affairs minister in the President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s Government – did this when on an inspection tour of Kidete Ward in Kilosa District this week.
In the event, he took the opportunity to educate his constituents on the benefits of dense forests to the environment in general - and, especially, in this day and age of rapid global climate change for the worse.
He also advised the villagers to plant commercial-oriented, harvestable trees not only for their environment-friendly attributes, but also as an income-generating resource that can be harvested with time.
We earnestly commend Prof Kabudi for his noble efforts at preserving the environment and Mother Nature in general, but also more so for doing this at a time when the hydra-headed climate change monster is menacingly creeping on us in the form of severe drought beginning this November.
As we reported in these august pages yesterday, the director general of the Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA), Dr Agnes Kijazi, has warned that the projected drought is likely to have far-reaching adverse effects on many sectors countrywide that contribute considerably to socioeconomic development.
These include – but are by no means limited to – agriculture, tourism, energy, water, livestock, fisheries and other living organisms in the forms of plants, wildlife and humans: the whole gamut of resources, extant and potential/prospective.
So, while thanking Prof Kabudi and Dr Kijazi for their cautionary acts, we must also scramble to take functional measures that would do more than merely mitigate the misery and hardships which are associated with wanton deforestation and the seemingly relentless climate change.
WHEN JUSTICE IS UNDER SIEGE
Reports are again emerging of people taking the law into their own hands by killing suspected criminals, and this should be cause for grave concern. This has put the Police Force and the judicial system in the spotlight in that it reflects a general loss of trust in the two institutions in areas where violent crime is prevalent.
They are a manifestation of patience that has run out and simmering anger that is beginning to boil over. The widespread belief in areas where local residents are at the mercy of vicious criminals is that the Police Force has failed to protect law-abiding people and their property. A person is considered innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, and what is happening now with alarming frequency in many parts of the country is a recipe for a total breakdown of law and order.
But this is what happens when people feel they are under siege – boxed in – with no one to turn to for assistance. The killing of suspects shows that something is seriously amiss insofar as the provision of security and dispensation of justice are concerned.
It is time the Police Force went out of its way to regain the trust of those it is supposed to serve. As for the Judiciary, not only must justice be done, it must also be seen to be done.
