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Issue 00534 |
September 6 - 12, 2008 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
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Local News |
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Goods worth billions said to disappear mysteriously at Namanga border By Valentine Marc Nkwame The no-man’s land buffer zone along the Tanzania-Kenya border at Namanga has turned into a typical Bermuda Triangle into which goods and consignments disappear in mysterious circumstances. A recent survey by the East African Business Council has uncovered a huge commercial mystery involving the melting into thin air of more than US$ 602 million worth of either unrecorded or undervalued cross-border transactions at Namanga in the last fiscal year. According to EABC survey report the disappearance of such goods occurs despite the fact that a substantial number of custom officials had been deployed to the rather busy border post to manage revenues and all types of transactions there. "Data from the Kenyan side of Namanga indicates that over US$ 705.67million worth of exports crossed into Tanzania in 2007, yet at the Tanzanian side the figures showed that goods received from Kenya within the same period accounted to only US$ 103.18 million,” reads the EABC report. Apparently that means over US$602.49 million worth of import value disappeared between the two custom gates located just 400 meters apart. Or, strangely, a monster and possibly some sort of Bermuda triangle is swallowing up goods, consignments and other forms of imports and exports passing within the narrow buffer zone stretch. It is still not known where all these goods go after leaving the Kenyan gate. The mystery resembles that of Bermuda triangle. The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean in which a number of aircraft and surface vessels have disappeared. Some people have claimed that the disappearances fall beyond the boundaries of human error or acts of nature. As it seems according to local observers here, the disappearance of such exports at Namanga also fall beyond boundaries of error. The report was tabled during the recently held, meeting for the private sector representatives from the East African Community members states of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi who had converged in Arusha last week. The Minister for East African Cooperation, Dr Diodorus Kamala lashed out at ‘poor record keeping’ and ‘bogus’ documentation at the Tanzanian side of the Namanga-border. The Namanga border post, in Longido district is manned by a total of 27 customs officials. The figure is quite large taking into consideration the size of the post and as far as the EABC is concerned more than adequate to handle the cross-border affairs and transactions. "This is also a clear testimony that officers on the Kenyan side of the border keep better Records and handle their affairs properly,” added Dr. Kamala pointing out that as far as the Tanzania manpower at Namanga is concerned, there was indeed a very serious problem. At the Regional Revenue offices where we went to get the TRA side of the story, we were instructed to fill special forms indicating what exactly we wanted to know and why, including the name of the media, reporters and Identification card number. An officer at the TRA offices in Arusha explained that those were new media procedures adopted recently.
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