|
Cure the pirate garage ’insanity’
2006-11-12 09:54:22
By Editor
We wish, yet again, to comment on something that is within the broader subject of transforming Dar es Salaam city and its environs from a dirty and disorderly urban and peri-urban centre to a magnificent host of administrative, commercial and political activities, as well as residential outfits.
In doing so, we are driven by the conviction that a given goal can be attained if it is undertaken on a full-scale, rather than partial basis.
As we remarked in the recent past, clearing the heart of the city and the outlying areas of petty traders and relocating them to centres where their activities can be undertaken conveniently for themselves and other members of the community, was praiseworthy.
We proposed, however, that cracking down on alms-seeking and streamlining urban livestock keeping were among other helpful inputs into the campaign.
For the otherwise good ’’show’’ is spoiled when beggars are allowed to run it in part of the former machinga operational zones.
It is actually worse, because with the machinga off the scenes, the beggars are conspicuous, both there, and at road inter-sections.
The keep-city, keep-suburbs campaign is similarly weakened, when ramshackle structures, including those that were food and drink dispensing outlets, are demolished, but cows, goats and sheep pollute neighbourhoods and are let loose onto the streets.
In the list should be added pirate garages, over which a ringing outcry has been generated in the past, and on which pronouncements by successive teams of so-called city fathers to ”freeze” them have been made.
Most of the garages are located in residential centres, where, given the nature of their operations, they produce irritating noise and pose risks to the lives of those in their proximity, in the event of, say, fire outbreaks.
On top of that, garages, a good number of which are not fenced off, are unsightly and therefore render even otherwise scenic places ugly.
We do, of course, appreciate the importance of garages, which should be accessed at reasonable distances from where people live, as well as where vehicular breakdowns may occur.
This can be taken care of in a manner similar to the siting of petrol stations, whereby public convenience is -or must - be the overriding consideration.
The current situation, whereby even some residential compounds are mini-garages, or full-scale facilities, and not very far between them, is extremely annoying, worrisome and risky.
So, over to you, the ’’fathers’’. Cure the pirate garage ’’insanity’’.
|
