Victims of Mbagala bomb blasts whose houses are within 500 metres from the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) depot, will be removed from the area soon after completion of the valuation process. The Minister of Defence and National Service, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, told the 'Daily News' that the decision comes following preliminary recommendations by the valuation team.
“We’ll have no any other solution but to remove them from the area, since they have all along occupied the area illegally. This will be done soon after they are compensated,” he said. Dr Mwinyi said that TPDF had several times talked to the authorities responsible for issuing construction permits and asked them not to issue permission to people to construct near the army depot.
“However, in this case we can not hold the authorities accountable because they did not issue permits for the construction of such houses, the people had decided to trespass on their own,” he said. The Minister said that the team formed by his office to probe the matter had in its preliminary recommendations also asked the government to consider removal of the residents from the area. Dr Mwinyi referred to as baseless, the rumours that the government was earlier planning to transfer the TPDF depot instead.
Interviewed victims in Mbagala welcomed the idea of relocation, saying that the place has become unpleasant to most of them, since the incident took place late last month. “In fact we have developed a kind of phobia, many of us have proved that indeed the area is dangerous for human settlements because of what they saw on April 19,” said Mr Mustafa Muhidini, a father of five. Meanwhile, the Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner, Mr William Lukuvi, yesterday noted that some of the houses valuated in the on-going exercise will not be compensated.
“My team of valuers has told me that some houses were valuated for the sake of record keeping and also to gather evidences of why the owners should be either compensated or not,” he said. Mr Lukuvi said that the valuation exercise was on its final stages as until Wednesday evening, only 41 houses out of 8,306 were yet to be valuated. In another development, Mr Lukuvi added that until Wednesday, at least 338 children had undergone health screening and only two were found to have health problems.
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