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Senseless loss of lives must be prevented
2007-05-20 09:07:48
By Editor
Cabinet minister Anthony Diallo and a couple of other people, including high-profile ones, cheated death narrowly recently, when a vessel they wee travelling in capsized along the Mwanza-Nansio Lake Victoria ``path``.
For the survivors, or death cheaters, if you like, their families and the rest of us, it was a big relief that divine intervention spared those souls.
And here, the political or social status of the passengers is immaterial. At issue, crucially, is that should the worst have happened, precious souls would have perished.
Death, put another way, is no respecter of high status and discriminatory for people commonly known as ordinary wananchi a cumulative expression of the so-called common man in the street.
But while accidents leading to death cannot be ruled out absolutely, it is incredible how we sometimes may be often do or do not do things that suggest that we literally invite death.
Sheer logic should have dictated that after the horrible accident in 1996 when mv Bukoba sank near Mwanza port and entombed nearly 1,000 people, we would be extra-alert on maritime transport safety.
Yet after a few anxious months when the hyper-sensitive individuals shunned sea travel, and relatives of those courageous enough to travel in lakes and the Indian Ocean kept their fingers crossed, as they awaited word on safe arrivals or otherwise, it was back to square one.
A couple of presumed accidents have occurred,claiming precious lives, and near-misses have also been registered.
In virtually all the cases, vessels that are not entirely sea-worthy have been to blame, including the one aboard which the Diallo entourage had been.
This is worrying and disgusting because it implies that lives are risked on vessels that should not be sailing, but should either be docked on ports for repairs or servicing; or should ``rust in peace`` because they would be death traps if they were committed to sea.
The implication, by extension, is that laxity looms over safeguards like regular inspections, issuance of permits to sail, and sanctions for violators of regulations.
And since non-sea-worthy vessels manage to deliver passengers to their destinations safely several times, it is apparently assumed that talk about risks is unduly alarmist !
There is a crying need to tighten conditions and regulations related to sea travel, plus, of course, surface transport, because laxity invites loss of, injuries and grief to lives and people who are precious creatures of God.
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