Efforts on to end the UNDERGOING water rationing, official reassures Dar

I’m looking at Page 5 of the Friday, November 4 edition of the tabloid closely associated with this columnist. In a story entitled, ‘Samia’s short and long term measures to end water woes’, the scribbler purports to quote a senior government official saying:

“I want to see adequate water flow to the residents of Dar es Salaam, thus eliminating the UNDERGOING water rationing.”

Undergoing water rationing? Nope! Our scribbling colleague, I aver, meant say, “ONGOING water rationing.”

Come Saturday, November 5, and the same newsroom whose story I cite above had a Page 1 story whose headline read, ‘SELL of edible oil in open space (sic!) a health concern’.

Also Read:  Concern over edible oil trade at open spaces

Now the word “sell” is a verb, yet the headline writer used it as a noun. Wrong! I aver he had in mind the noun SALE, which in Kiswahili means “uuzaji”, while “sell” is “uza”. Beware words that sound alike while they differ in spelling and meaning!

I also have an issue with the idea of noting that edible oil is sold in “open space” instead of just saying “IN THE OPEN”.

And the summary of the story reads: “The Tanzania Bureau of Standards, (sic!) and sunflower edible oil stakeholders have declared a crackdown against cooking oil traded in the open ATMOSPHERE…”

Open atmosphere? I doubt this expression, for “atmosphere” refers to the layers of gases surrounding a planet or other body. Scientific sources inform us that the earth’s atmosphere is composed of about 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen and one per cent other gases.

So, this can’t be the kind environment in which traders, however notorious, can be found selling their merchandise. We should simply drop this word “atmosphere” and talk of …in THE OPEN.

Still on Saturday, November 5, and I have in my hands a copy of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet that’s carrying a Page 1 story with the headline, ‘Mpango markets Tanzania’s irrigation farming’. In this one, the scribbler purports to report what the VP said by writing in Para 2:

“He said that the country has A large TRACT of land and conducive weather…”

Hello! Ours country covers over 900,000 square kilometres, with over 880,000 square kilometres of that being land mass. It means TZ cannot have just ONE tract of land, however large. Why, “tract” means “AN AREA of land.” Now given its massive size, TZ should be correctly declared as having large TRACTS (not a large tract) of land.

On Page 6 of the broadsheet, there’s a story entitled, ‘15 million Tanzanians to get free health insurance’, and therein, the scribbler purports to report on what an MP said in regard to universal health care (UHI):

“This…calls for the government to borrow a leaf from other countries that are implementing the universal health insurance ON THE GLOBE.”

We’ve a case here of useless information being delivered to readers. If you’re taking of other countries implementing UHI, do you have to tell your readers that the implementation taking place “on the globe”? Eh, so that they don’t assume that’s happening in Planet Mars?

Our colleague serves his readers a further dose of useless information when writes in Leg 4:

“Data indicates that by 2021, out of about 60 million Tanzanians, only 15 PER CENT of them were covered, which means, out of EVERY 100 Tanzanians, ONLY 15 are covered.”

Our readers are not dunces! We’ve no business explaining to them that when we say 15 per cent of Tanzanians, we mean 15 out of 100 Tanzanians. No siree!

Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of Saturday, November 5 ran a story on Page 6 entitled,

‘WaterAid donates 5m/- worth health equipment…’, in which the scribbler purports to report what a senior regional medic said:

“He said despite the fact that Tanzania has no Ebola cases, there IS NEED to put strategies to ensure the disease does not enter the country.”

There is need? Nope; we say there IS A NEED…

Ah, this treacherous language called English!