Is there a road engineer at the Municipal Council?

Dear Editor

It seems that in the thirties, the area around lake Rukwa was a well known breeding ground for locusts. Attentive at protecting their plantations, the British were hiring every year some of the inhabitants of the area to spray the marshlands where the locusts were proliferating. To their great surprise, the locusts were always reappearing and they had to keep on spraying year after year. Little did they know that their workers intent on keeping their job, were very careful to leave every year an unspread area where the locusts had the chance of multiplying so that the year after, there was work (and money) again.

It seems as if the workers of Arusha municipality have learnt their lesson from the inhabitants of Rukwa: to work in such a way that next year, they have to start all over again. Each year, work is being done on the Njiro road and after a single heavy rain, all the murram or whatever has been put on the road has been washed away and they have to start all over again.

It does not take a degree in engineering to know that water and roads are not the best of friends. When the Konoike company tarred the Njiro road, they started wisely with deep trenches on both sides. Common sense does not seem to be very common around our municipality where leaders seem more intent on collecting money than on using it wisely.

Our locals "engineers" might have degree from some university but they do not seem to have gone through the primary school of road building. They have not yet learnt their basic lessons. No drainage is foreseen, the road is changed into a river or a lake after a heavy rain and we are back to square one. Dear leaders, could you make sure that if  a certain work is undertaken, it is done properly, at least once?

Thanks for paying attention and stopping the hemorrhage of our money, down unexisting drains!

Jemal Bin Morris, Njiro resident.

Dear Editor

Whose jurisdiction does this road fall under ? Is it Ngorongoro Conservation Area? Is it Tanzania National

Parks ? Is it the government ? Whoever it is should be taken to task. This road is in an appalling

condition, our safari group named this "the road of shame" and it is an utter and total disgrace to

Tanzania. This road is highly dangerous and is an accident waiting to happen. In fact, I am given to

understand that a lot of accidents have already happened due to the terrible condition of this road.

More than half of our group developed back problems after enduring 3 excruciating hours on it.