Blog

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has called on called on local and international organizations to assist in the combating of a measles epidemic currently ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC).

MSF made this call through its Medical Coordinator in DRC, Rachel Séguin,''MSF teams, in collaboration with the teams of the Ministry of Health, are doing their utmost to cut the chain of transmission of the disease by providing vaccination responses as soon as cases of measles are reported, and by providing care for patients.''

"But in addition to the efforts already made in recent months, more resources and organisations are needed. Ensuring the supply of vaccines and medicines is essential - the sooner the better."

The Ministry of Health in DRC, recently declared an out break of the disease which has officially recorded more than 1,500 measles-related deaths in the first five months of this year.

This accounts for  75 per cent of the total number of deaths recorded throughout 2012 during the deadliest epidemic of the last decade. 

Since January,  MSF has been working with local teams of the Ministry of Health in 10 provinces of the country: Haut-Lomami, Haut-Uele, Ituri, Lualaba, Kasai, Kasai Central, North Kivu, South Kivu, Tanganyika and Tshopo, to combat the  measles epidemic.

The Cameroonian Government has ordered the idenfitication and crackdown on suppliers of hard drugs to schools.

The Government gave this order, recently,  through the Minister of Terrotial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, during a meeting with administration and security officials in Douala.

The order is coming on the heels of the increasing rate of drug abuse  amongst school children and the youth in the city of Douala and the rest of Littoral Region.

Atanga Nji maintained that urgent steps had to be taken to  the  curb trafficking of Tramol, Tramadol and cocaine in the region, just as he warned of  the consequences of their abuse on school children and youth .

Safiya Hassan Sheikh Ali Jimale has been appointed the first female Mayor in Somalia.

Safiya Hassan Jimale,  will  oversee the affairs of Beledweyne in central Somalia.

The city  is the capital of Hiiran Province, located in the Shebelle Valley near the border with Ethiopia and about 210 miles north of Mogadishu.

She becomes the second Mayor of the city, which has more than 1,7 million inhabitants, after Beledweyne held municipal elections in 2012, the first since the beginning of the civil war in the early 1990s

Women currently in position of Mayors in  the Africa include Yvonne Aki Sawyerr of Freetown, Sierra Leone, Marie-Chantal Rwakazina of Kigali, Rwanda, Rohey Malick Lowe of Banjul, The Gambia and Soham El Wardani of Dakar, Senegal).

As tens of thousands of protesters continue their agitation for civil rule in the capital, Khartoum, the Sudanese military has ordered the closure of the office of  Al Jazeera Media Network.

 According to a Press Release by Al Jazeera denounced the "abrupt" closure of Khartoum bureau and the banning of its reporters from reporting in the country, calling it "a complete violation of the freedom of the press".

The protest  is coming on the heels of a  two-day strike organised by demonstrators and opposition groups frustrated by a deadlock in talks on a transition to democracy.

In reaction the head of the central region in Khartoum, General Bahar Ahmed  said ''The protest site has become unsafe and represents a danger to the revolution and the revolutionaries and threatens the coherence of the state and its national security.''

The absence of budgetary provision for training and retraining programmes for workers in Nigeria in the last four years has been fingered as one of the impediments to good governance.

This is the position of the All Workers Convergence(AWC) who made this known through its National Coordinator, Comrade Andrew Emelieze.

''Generally, workers are complaining in all aspects  that affects productivity, including training, retraining and manpower development which ahs been at its lowest ebb in the last four years.This is so because in the last four years we have been having budget failures and the budget has not been fully implemented. Therefore funds for the training and retraining of workers might not be readily available based on budget non-performance, which of course has affected productivity and the psychology of workers, coupled with the gravity of low pay. Workers are generally ill motivated'', Comrade Emelieze opined.

The Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit(NFIU) recently pronounced that states would no longer control the funds of Local Governments in the country beginning from 1 June, 2019.

However, state Governors insist that the NFIU’s action is illegal, but a cross section of Nigerians are of the opinion that the action is timely and would enable development get to the grassroots unhindered.

In this interview, the Spiritual Head, Founder and Grand Imam of Shafaudeen-in-Islam Worldwide, Prof. Sabitu Olagoke opines that autonomy for the Local Governments would end wastage and mismanagement of finances of Local Government funds by state Governors.

Excerpts :

What is your reaction to the pronouncement of the NFIU Local Government funds ?

The pronouncement of the NFIU is long overdue, in view of the fact that the financial scam we are trying to prevent through the states’ control of the Joint accounts of States and Local Governments, only resulted in the impoverishment of the Local Governments as well as the people at the grassroots.

The superpower approach of many state Governors, with the attendant wastage of resources not been directed to the development concern of the grassroots must have informed the NFIU’s pronouncemnt.

Equally, the bureaucratic process leading to the unnecessary delays as well as some hanky panky by the National Assembly and their probable collaboration with the Governors would have informed the Federal Government’s decision to separate the NFIU to do a perfect job.

Naturally, the clamor for the autonomy of Local Governments ought to have been done in the spirit of the need for the development of the grass roots, this is for rural integration to get a boost. The Local Government is closer to the people and this tier of government is easier to approach by the ordinary man.

However, the culture of running governance as a personal empire, arguments would ever surface against the move by the Governors, whose meeting under the umbrella of the Nigeria Governors Forum have never been known to be on the side of the masses, whose rights they regularly and easily trample upon.

The state Governors should realize that their annual budget should be within the limits of what the constitution assigns them and projects to be executed must be such to cover their specified areas of jurisdiction.

All over the world most especially in the countries that are known to be fully developed such as the United Kingdom as well as the french speaking nations like Cote Ivoire, the Local Authorities take charge of development at the grassroots, with visible impact on the lives of the people, making their nations to follow the normal curve of economic class-Low, Middle and High, but in Nigeria, the middle class has gone into extinction, leaving us to the mercy of the low, high and outrageously and extremely very high in an environment of poverty, destitution, hunger and diseases, with every matter of development been politicized.

Structurally in Nigeria, a lot of things are wrong and they have been there for so long, mainly because the masses are highly marginalized and incapacitated. This has made the politicians to lose focus on development, while they chase the shadows of self aggrandizement, illegal acquisition of wealth with low records of physical symbol on record of good performance while in office.

All the masses could reap as dividends of Democracy is mere propaganda to cajole the people . They spend three months in office as political office holders, all they acquire during this period would be fatter than the gratuity of retired Professors, who must have served the nation for almost 40 to 50 years.

With the NFIU’s pronouncement, sanity would be introduced in the financial transactions of the Local Governments. Also one would hope that the institutional committees such as the ACTU will equally spring into action to check the excesses of principal officers and surrogate allied officers in milking dry various institutions. For example there is a need for Nigerians to know the sources of the funds of some civil servants building Malls and edifices in Abuja and Lagos and even buying houses abroad.

I have seen Universities and Polytechnics, where some people appointed as Bursars thank their their luck in their religious houses and with all fanfare throw parties as if to say their salaries would be more than that of the Senators.

I have equally seen Registrars building palaces of complexes in different cosmopolitan towns and floating event centers as well as hotels spreading across hectares of land, but without having genuine sources of funds from any of their established business conglomerate.

The owners of these, reflect the rot in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, in a land where we are fighting corruption. We must not lose sight of this.

To make the financial autonomy of Local Governments to stand firm, there is the need to have a very effective network of anti-graft measures to checkmate possible excesses of Local Government Principal Officers from relaunching orgies of financial recklessness.

It is not enough to make a law or effect a change, it is necessary to monitor critically, the workings in order that the Local Government does not again deviate from the expected service target of effecting development positively, with welfare of the people as a priority.

Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Foundation(SSTF) in continuation of its "Don't Waste, Eat!" food waste reduction programme' has distributed over 200 kilogrammes of food to over 35 families.

The "Don't Waste Eat!" food waste reduction programme kicked off in July 2018 and is facilitated by  the Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Foundation, (SSTF) in collboration with Betterfly Tourism --a software publisher for tourism profession.

The programme serves to equip staff with necessary skills to measure and monitor food waste, provide hotels with a platform that facilitates monitoring of cost savings and food waste reduction.

According to the SSTF Project Officer, Rosetta Alcindor. the Foundation is committeed to putting smiles on the faces of families.

"There is more to a food donation than what we usually think. We are not only providing food for the community and diverting good food from the landfill, but we are also putting smiles on families' faces.''

"Though a lot of the products are buffet leftovers or had reached their best before date, they are still good for consumption.''

"As the food is donated, it reduces the demand for importation of food products on the market as families now consume what they were donated, hence avoiding CO2 emissions along the supply chain," Alcindor stated.

Families received vegetables, fruits and other food products which included pastries, cakes and bread. The donations were made by SPAR supermarket and a number of hotels which are members of the Seychelles Hospitality and Tourism Association such as Alphonse Island Lodge, Constance Ephelia, Bravo Restaurant, H Resort and Kempinski Seychelles Resort.