Read Mazingira Newsletter Every Month
Mazingira/Environment Editorial Board
Editor
Jacob Kambili
Editorial Board
Joyce Ngallawa
Martha Tesha
Bayizi Nkugutwa
Graphics Designer
Joseph M. Ndesika
Typesetter
Miss Zabibu Amri
Reporters
Members of the MPC and the public in general
Office
Makongoro Road CCM Building
4th Floor, Room No. 86 & 87
Address
P.O. Box 2516 Mwanza, Tanzania
Tel: 028-2500829
Mobile: 0741-467887
E-mail:mpcmwanza@hotmail.com
This country has never ever had an Environmental Law upto now, 42 years since it became a sovereign state, during which much water has flowed under the bridge!
This lack of an appropriate policy to address serious environmental issues has, in turn, made all government efforts to check environmental-unfriendly human activities end in total, ridiculous failure.
Mismanagement and haphazard disposal of chemical wastes which are lethal to natural environment is a case in point here.
A study by the Natural Environmental Management Council's (NEMC's) pollution unit, for instance, did identify an accumulation of hazardous chemical wastes of over 30 years!
The study has established that this obsolete stuff consisting of such agro-based chemicals as banned DDT, Veterinary Vaccines and medical drugs of about 1,200 tones in Tanzania mainland's 18 regions is highly lethal.
Worst still, farmers, major recipients of the chemicals under discussion are not well sensitized in their use, storage and handling, leading to the formers' resentment against the use of such chemicals, on the one hand.
But on the other, the cost of disposing of the obsolete chemical wastes is high in the country. Each specific hazardous chemical wastes calls for special expertise and procedures in disposing of them.
It is for these underlying reasons that we sincerely applaud Dr. Palamagamba's advice to the government on the importance of putting a general environmental legislation in place to arrest the disgusting environmental degradation.
The Bill, if passed, will certainly address such environmental upsets as the one mentioned above, with which the existing Natural Resources Ordinance had not been able to deal with for obvious reasons.
The logic here is that we human beings deal with natural resources, and by so doing, simply we deal with an environment or mother 'Earth', if you like.
That's why we regard the government's readily acceptance of the public opinion, about drafting a general environmental legislation, as being long overdue.
March, 2005 issue
Editorial