Low science enrolment causes worry

Arusha. Only 14 per cent of tertiary education students in Tanzania during 2010-2012 were enrolled in science, engineering and technology subjects, one of the lowest ranked country in sub Saharan Africa.

The rate has dropped from 34 per cent of those who were taking the three subjects between 2003-2004. However, it is nearly double the percentage of tertiary education students surveyed in 1986-1989 period. In 1986-1989 - according to statistics sourced from the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) - only nine per cent of students pursued science, engineering and allied subjects.

Tanzania ranked last of the ten countries surveyed during 1986-1989, 2003-2004 and 2010-2012 but for 2010-2012 it is followed by Mozambique (22 per cent), Burkina Faso ( 24 per cent) and Ghana as well as Ivory Coast (25 per cent each). Other countries surveyed are Ethiopia whose 30 per cent of tertiary education students have enrolled in science and engineering subjects, Kenya (29), Malawi (54) and Rwanda 33 per cent. No figures were available for enrolment in Senegal for 2010-2012.

The information emerged as the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST) hosted visiting professors and science students from the United States who had come to evaluate the country’s teaching of science in different levels of education.

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L.A. County supervisors to ban large wind turbines in unincorporated areas

After hearing pleas from more than a dozen Antelope Valley residents, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took preliminary steps Tuesday to ban utility-scale wind turbines in unincorporated areas of the county. The supervisors unanimously approved a draft Renewable Energy Ordinance that updated permitting and regulations on small-scale wind and solar projects and utility-scale solar projects.

Supervisor Michael Antonovich, whose district includes the Antelope Valley, proposed the ban on the large wind turbine projects, which would have been permitted to be up to 500 feet high under the proposed ordinance. Antonovich said he was sympathetic to the residents’ concerns.

“Generating renewable energy is important and Antelope Valley residents have dealt with the negative effects of solar field development including dust generation, noise and thousands of acres of visual blight,” Antonovich said. “However, wind turbines are inappropriate and should be banned.”

The county’s Department of Regional Planning staff had recommended that the large wind farms, be allowed, but regulated. Utility-scale wind turbine projects generate electricity for off-site use and are usually contracted through a power-purchase agreement with a utility. The county’s Supervising Regional Planner Susan Tae said the prohibition against utility-scale wind turbines would not diminish the region’s ability to produce renewable energy. She said the county has been receiving proposals for large-scale solar projects, not wind turbines.

“The board’s direction in terms of what they see are the types of renewable energy sources Los Angeles County should be producing and that’s solar,” Tae said , More than a dozen Antelope Valley residents said the wind turbines would destroy their vistas, impede aerial fire fighting efforts, create fugitive dust and noise and contribute to health concerns like valley fever.

At Antonovich’s request the board also directed the Department of Public Health to provide a report on procedures for requiring soil testing for valley fever before utility-scale renewable energy projects are built. Frank Serafine, who owns Honey Hills Farms, told the board he supported renewable energy and uses solar and wind energy to power his property, but said he was opposed to the utility-scale wind turbines.

“Our entire valley is zoned agricultural,” Serafine said. “Why are we converting this beautiful land that was zoned this way from our forefathers into industrial power plants?” Marty Foster said he wanted the board to ban all large-scale wind turbines and solar projects that are constructed on the ground. “There’s plenty of roofs and car ports to put this stuff on and leave the county alone,” he said.

The new regulations incentivize the construction of small-scale projects and projects that are mounted on roofs and other existing structures by streamlining the permitting process and by establishing minimal regulations. The ordinance also standardizes requirements for large-scale solar panel arrays.  Small-scale wind farms, which provide power to the site upon which they are built, are still allowed under the proposed ordinance and may be up to 85 feet tall depending on the size of the property.

State legislation prompted the review of the county’s Renewable Energy Ordinance. During his inaugural address in January, Gov. Jerry Brown called for a statewide plan to increase renewable energy usage to 50 percent by 2030.Tanya DeRivi, of Southern California Public Power Authority, said the ordinance might deter any new renewable energy projects in the county.

“We are concerned this ordinance would add unduly burdensome requirements, such as under grounding transmission lines, that would likely make many future renewable projects so expensive that very few, if any, prospective buyers would be willing to pay for them,” she said.

Marvin Moon, of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, also spoke against the provision of the ordinance that would require transmission lines to be placed underground. The supervisors will review a final ordinance before it is adopted.

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Angels Flight supporters circulate petition calling for reopening historic downtown L.A. railway

LOS ANGELES - A group of Los Angeles history buffs and residents said today they are circulating a petition to help get Angels Flight, a historic railway billed as the “shortest railway in the world,” re-opened after authorities ordered it closed nearly two years ago due to a mishap.

Local historians and tour-company operators Richard Schave and Kim Cooper started the petition, which has garnered more than 400 signatures since backers began circulating it Monday. Their petition calls for Mayor Eric Garcetti to step in to “help cut the red tape in Sacramento and San Francisco” so that something could be done to allow the railway, known as a funicular, to begin operating again.

The funicular, at 351 S. Hill St. between Third and Fourth streets, has sat dormant for nearly two years, despite “licensed professional engineers” and the Los Angeles Fire Department saying the “safety issues have been addressed,” contends the petitioners.

The California Public Utilities Commission is requiring that a walkway be installed next to the funicular tracks before it would allow Angels Flight to begin carrying passengers again, petitioners said. Commission officials did not immediately respond to questions about the current status of the funicular.

The funicular has been closed since one of the two railcars came off the tracks in September 2013. Six people were riding in the cars and none were injured. The National Transportation Safety Board released a report a month later saying that operators of the Angels Flight railway in downtown Los Angeles had been using a tree branch for months to bypass a safety feature when one of the cable cars derailed.

In the report, federal investigators said the railcars were halting frequently as they made their one-minute trips up and down the tracks on Bunker Hill. Operators could only keep the cars running by using a tree branch -- broken off from a nearby tree -- to press down on a “start” button on the control panel, thereby “negating” a safety feature in the car.

Schave told City News Service today the funicular has been vandalized since its closure and it will continue to fall into disrepair if nothing is done. “It is the last vestige of Victorian Los Angeles,” he said. “It is just an incredibly important structure and much beloved.” Gordon Pattison, who lived in Bunker Hill from the 1940s to the 1960s, said it is one of the last structures left from when the area was residential.

“It’s a unique part of our heritage, it is functional,” Pattison said. “It’s one of the city’s great assets and it should be running again.” Pattison said if Angels Flight were to re-open it could take workers between the office buildings in the California Plaza, at the top of the hill, and the numerous eateries in Grand Central Market. The trek on the steep hill would normally take about five minutes of walking, Pattison said.

John Welborne, president of Angels Flight Railway in 2013, said at the time that the nonprofit organization had been struggling for years to keep fares low, relying heavily on donations and income from movie shoots. A recent Muppets movie included a cameo for the railway, which brought in close to $2,000.

Those interviewed by City News Service today said Welborne is no longer president of the organization, which has traditionally operated the funicular, and there does not appear to be a replacement. Hal Bastian, a real estate agent and downtown booster, is considered to be one of the main people working to re-open Angels Flight Railway, according to Schave. Col. J.W. Eddy first opened a funicular rail up Bunker Hill on Dec. 31, 1901, when rides cost a penny.

It was dismantled and put into storage in 1969 because of the Bunker Hill urban renewal project, then rebuilt and reopened in 1996, a half-block south of the original site. In 2001, an accident that killed one person and seriously injured seven others prompted another closure that lasted nine years.

It reopened in 2010, in time for the railway celebrated its 110th anniversary on New Year’s Eve 2010. The California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees Angels Flight, shut it down for almost a month in June 2012 when inspectors found that a wheel part that holds the cars on the track, the flange, had been worn down to a thickness that was unsafe on three of eight wheels.


The funicular, which takes riders on one-minute trips up and down Bunker Hill, re-opened July 5, 2012, after the operator installed all new wheels made of harder steel. The railway still uses its original cars from 1901, named Olivet and Sinai.

source: dailynews

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The truth about Manji's agent nabbed in alleged Sh700m bribe

 

Drama was the word among onlookers as hundreds of thousands shilling packed in two bags were impounded by police in a hotel in Dodoma municipality, allegedlydestined for distribution to members of the CCM general congress and higher party organs.

The hotel is situated in Kisasa area where the money was found in the hands of Quality Group employee Amit Kevarami, holding an Indian passport M1470774. The precise amount of impounded cash was not imediately established but witnesses say police counted the money as they impounded it, and reached the figure of Sh725,205,000 on the spot.
The money was in Sh5,000 and Sh10,000 banknotes in bundles of Sh10m each. Police officers as well as those of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) were involved in the surprise move.

Eyewitnesses said police agents started quizzing what the Quality Group employee was doing, as he shifted massive bags one after another taking them to a waiting car outside the hotel, a Toyota Land Cruiser T687 ANQ. In the hotel is largely accommodating national conference members as well as those of the National Executive Committee of the ruling party.It is said that the cash was being sent to the camp of one of the five approved aspirants being presented before NEC, after being approved by the Central Committee on Friday night. On the arrested employee’s mobile phone there were SMS from his employer, billionaireYusuf Manji who allegedly has business association with some prominent camps in the ruling party.

The employee was conversing in English and some halting Kiswahili, when he realised that he was being arrested, attempted to get a lady officer to take one bag with money, which she refused and called other people to witness the scene.

Among those earmarked to receive the casgh was a member of Parliament from one Dar es Salaam region constituency who would have received Sh10m and sign the payment voucher. Others set to benefit from the distribution of the cash are two deputy ministers, one receiving Sh15m and another Sh10m.

Apart from the trader being arrested by police, a driver from Ngatuni Traders, Rashid Nkungu, who was hired by a Quality Group employee, told reporters that he went to receive (those bearing the cash) at the airport here at around 7.30 in the morning.

He said the Quality Group official (bearing the cash) was accompanied by three other individuals, all of them Asians.“These Indians hired a car at our office. I am a driver and received them at the airport and brought them here at St Gaspar (Hotel). They had their bags from the airport up to this place, four of them,” Nkungu said.

He also said out of the four, he could recognise one of them as Yusuf Manji and later he took them from the hotel to go to the CRDB Bank, Dodoma branch. He said he took to the bank three of them and later came back for two more one of them remaining at the bank.When they reached the hotel the passengers took one of their colleagues and then proceeded to Dodoma airport.

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Okwi's indispensability to halt Simba in title pursuit

Emmanuel Okwiri �Okwi�

 Mainland football transfer window has seen players coming in and going out of the country as clubs gained and lost their potential players.

 

Simba will have to make to do without striker Emmanuel Okwiri ‘Okwi’ whose degree of indispensability for the club is second to none.

 

Okwi used to be the kind of a striker who not only gave confidence his playmates but the supporters on the stands too. Downplayed in Kampala, Okwi used to be rare treasure within Simba. Even Simba archrivals had to think twice when playing against Simba with Okwi in the starting line-up. Let the Ugandans mock Okwi but for Simba the absence of him has been huge detrimental.

 

The impact Emmanuel Okwi's move to Denmark will have on Simba will only be known at the end of the yet to be begin season; but for many Simba fans it is understandable to feel a deep sense of loss. 

 

How Simba will go about finding an adequate replacement for the Ugandan striker is a crucial part of where they want to be, come next season. Finding a perfect replacement for Okwi is very hard given his quality and the players available on the market.

 

With Okwi departure, Simba will be different side this season particularly up front. He was, by far, Simba's best player last season, so finding someone with his prowess and ability will be a tall order

 

SImba will have to find another player who can, quite simply, score. Okwi scored ten goals in 24 games last season. Former Yanga striker, also like Okwi is from Uganda, Hamisi Kiiza has already been signed as a possible replacement. 

 

Kiiza who had a good three-year stay at Jangwani, is  slightly better marksman than Okwi and  no wonder can match the number of goals Okwi scored for Simba last season.

 

However, while Kiiza can be as good as Okwi in goal scoring terms, Okwi brought more than just goals. He was a playmaker. He was involved in more than 80 per cent of all the goals Simba scored last season by either scoring or providing the first or second assist. On top of that, Okwi's goals were some of the best goals in the Mainland premier league. His outrageous goal against Yanga in the Dar derby is simply one of the best in the long history of the derby.

 

Even in his bad day in office, Okwi's presence on the pitch was still an advantage to Simba as opponents had to be very cautious of his instinctive turns. Okwi's unpredictability meant opposition's defenders had all their eyes set on him which gave other players space to breath.

 

It was apparent to all that Okwi's mere presence on the pitch dared Simba fans to be more vocal and confident. He gave Simba fans the confidence to cheer their team. The moment he had the ball, Simba fans became vociferous which scared the not so experienced opponents. All that has gone.

 

In the end, Simba will have to admit a pound-for-pound replacement for the talented Ugandan striker is practically non-existent. The over 200m/- realised from the sale of Okwi can be used in strengthening the squad in lots of various positions; strengthening the entire squad to cover the inherent weaknesses we saw last year. Simba have to do that because you’re hardly going to get anyone better than Okwi in the region at the moment. 

 

Last but not least, we should not forget to commend Simba for not getting in the way of Okwi's search for green pastures abroad. The two parties have parted ways in the best of terms leaving room for Okwi's return if things don't go well in Denmark. 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

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NDC, Singapore take to palm oil production in Coast Region

The good oil. Kudra (L) and his brother, Said making palm oil in a traditional make shift crasher in Kigoma Region.

 The National Development Corporation (NDC) is in the final process of establishing an integrated large scale commercial farm for palm oil mainly for production of edible oil and electricity in the Coast Region.

 

Currently, the NDC is waiting for the Ministry of Land, Housing and Human Settlement to legally hand over land permit in the selected areas in the region including Kisarawe and Kibaha ready for the project to commence.

 

Already 10,000 ha of land have been set aside by NDC whereby 4,000 ha are in Kimalamisale village in Kisarawe District where the project is expected to benefit the entire area and the neighbouring villages.

 

NDC head of agro-industries Francis Alfred told ‘The Guardian’ in an exclusive interview in Dar es Salaam recently thatthe project will be implemented in partnership with a strategic investor.

 

According to him, so far the NDC has already acquired an investor from Singapore who will take the task of implementing the project.

 

He detailed that the investor known as Navabharat PTY Limited will invest a whopping USD111m to the project together with modern technology that would facilitate to ehnace production of the planned palm oil.

 

“We have already cleared with the investor with all essential terms needed before initiating the project,” he elaborated, adding that everything is in place and they are only waiting for a permit from the ministry.

 

“We will collaborate with the investor to ensure the effectiveness of the planned project for the betterment of our nation, the NDC will be responsible for the provision of facilitation support for acquiring he land,” explained Alfred.

 

The head notably said that, currently about 60 percent of oil which is consumed in Tanzania is imported and it costs a huge sum of money, hence the project shall help to save the budget, but also will help to obtain foreign exchange from the oil which will be exported.

 

“The project is expected to produce 7,250 litres per annum and will be able to accommodate the entire oil demand, such volume will help to substitute the imported oil for which feeds all population,” the official maintained.

 

Alfred explained that as part of corporate social responsibility, the project shall provide employment opportunities to not less than 4,000 villagers both direct and indirect jobs.

 

“The project will incorporate the surrounding farmers under contract farming system in order to empower them with entrepreneurship skills so they can produce much,” Alfred said.

 

“The farmers who will be involved in the activities will be assured of a ready market as they will sell their raw materials in the established processing industries,” the official detailed.

 

The project will contribute to the production of 10MW of electricity which will be produced from palm burgesses (remains) after industrial processes, he said.

 

Alfred said the electricity that would be produced from the project will be connected to the national grid to enhance the availability of electricity which is still the main challenge.

 

Both the surrounding villagers will benefit from the project as there will be improvement of social services like electricity, infrastructures, water schemes, schools, health centres and employment to earn income.

 

The National Development Corporation (NDC) is a leading industrial development and promotion organisation established in 1962 as Tanganyika Development Corporations (TDC) by an Act of Parliament to fill the gap of financing critical development projects and take over the colonial development corporation (CDC) formed in 1950.

 

In 1965, NDC was reestablished by the government to catalyse economic development in all sectors of the economy. After the Arusha Declaration, another role was added to NDC that of a holding corporation under the Public Corporation Act 1969 that came to an end in 1992 under the Public Corporation Act, 1992 as amended.

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Ukawa deadlocked on candidate for presidency Coalition says it will have a name in a week’s time

Chadema information officer Tumaini Makene briefs journalists in Dar es salaam yesterday on the progress of the UKAWA meeting convened to elect the coalition�s presidential candidate.

 The Coalition of People’s Constitution (Ukawa) hit a snag last night in choosing a compromise candidate for the presidential seat in the October General Election.

 

 

James Mbatia, a co-chairperson of the coalition, informed the press that Ukawa will have a name within the next seven days.

 

The coalition convened a meeting yesterday in Dar es Salam and was behind doors for hours as Chairpersons and general secretaries of the political parties forming Ukawa and members of its Technical Committee, the Ukawa Think Tank and the coalition’s Summit deliberated the matter.

 

Reports said the 26 new constituencies announced on Monday by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) stalled the Coalition’s decision as did the matter of legal requirement for the President and the Vice President aspirants to be from the same party.

 

The matter was of much contention since the coalition has several parties all vying to get a representative in one of the two top posts.

 

 “The coalition has already agreed on a presidential candidate but they are now finalising on how to divide the 26 constituencies,’ Chadema’s Spokesperson Tuamaini Mkaene told reporters at dusk. 

 

In October last year, opposition parties that make up the Coalition for the People's Constitution (Ukawa) agreed to have a single candidate to run for the presidential post.

 

The parties that inked the historic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Dar es Salaam include the leading opposition party Chadema, Civic United Front (CUF), NCCR-Mageuzi and National League for Democracy (NLD).

 

Reading contents of the signed document, Chadema’s Secretary General Dr Wilbroad Slaa said the parties have decided to sign the MoU ‘to fight for the people’s interest’ and on top of that, to mobilise the public to reject the proposed Constitution.

 

 “The agreement will allow us to work together to consolidate the four political parties’ policies to better serve the interest of the people as one party and will ease ascension of a single candidate to represent the four parties in the upcoming General Election,” he explained.

 

Announcing the new constituencies at the start of the week, NEC chairperson, Judge (retired) Damian Lubuva said the demarcation of the constituencies was 

meant to take into consideration the growing population and the increase of new councils.

 

Lubuva said that out of the 26 new voting constituencies, six of them had been established due to the increase in the population and 20 of them were as a result of the increasing number of councils.

 

He said that in Dar es Salaam alone two constituencies have been added these are Kibamba and Mbagala making a total of 10 constituencies in the region.

 

Other new constituencies included Handeni Urban (Tanga), Nanyamba (Mtwara), Makambako, (Njombe) Butiama (Mara) Tarime Urban (Mara) and Tunduma (Mbeya).

 Others are Nsimbo  and  Kavuu  in Katavi, Geita Urban  (Geita), Mafinga Urban, (Njombe), Kahama  Urban  (Shinyanga) and Ushetu (Shinyanga).

 

As well as Nzega Urban  (Tabora), Kondoa  Urban  (Dodoma), Newala Urban  (mtwara), Mbulu urban  (Arusha), Bunda  urban  (Mara), Ndanda (Mtwara),  Madaba (Ruvuma) and Mbinga Urban.

 

The constituencies which were established by considering population quota  included  Mbagala and Kibamba in Dar es Salaam, Vwawa in Mbeya, Manonga and Ulyankulu in Tabora and Mlimba in Morogoro.

 

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

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