GOVERNMENT RIGHT ON SECURE COVID-19 CERTIFICATES
The national vaccination campaign against Covid-19 was officially launched in Tanzania on July 28. That was when President Samia Suluhu Hassan formally launched the campaign by personally being vaccinated live on television after receiving 1,058,400 Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Covid-19 vaccine doses donated by the US under the Covax Scheme.
Covax stands for Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
On June 15 this year, Tanzania joined Covax and, in the event, President Hassan assured Tanzanians that Covid-19 vaccination is safe, free of charge – and optional.
But, persons who opt for the vaccination – and are actually vaccinated – are issued with a vaccination certificate which is intended to distinguish them from people who have not been so-vaccinated.
The certificates are considered both necessary and convenient.
This is especially for people who travel outside their countries, whereby – if they do have the requisite Covid-19 vaccination certificates – they are spared from quarantining and/or being declared persona non grata in places like Europe and elsewhere.
But, paper certificates are easy to forge and otherwise fabricate, so that unvaccinated persons can also have them – and get away with murder, so to speak.
However, in this day and age of rapid technological advances, that shortcoming can be surmounted by going digital in the Covid-19 vaccination certification stakes.
In this regard, it is befitting that our government is developing a secure, international-quality database-cum-system for electronic Covid-19 vaccination certificates that should be foolproof, thus effectively ending the availability/use of fake certificates.
We wish the government Godspeed in this, as we still have a long way to go in surmounting the Covid-19 pandemic every which way – including issuing genuine vaccination certificates to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.
BRING MLIMBA MOB TO JUSTICE
The burning by a mob in a village in Mlimba District, Morogoro Region, of a vehicle, three motorcycles and land surveying equipment worth tens of millions of shillings deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms possible.
In last weekend’s incident, a team from Mlimba District Council was attacked as it was about to survey land belonging to a person identified only as Balali. The land in question has been the subject of a protracted dispute because it has been idle for many years.
It is alleged that hundreds of people have settled on the land, with some claiming that they had bought plots from the village leadership, and proceeded to build permanent structures and grow crops. However, these reports – even if true – cannot possibly be justification for what is blatantly criminal conduct.
By taking the law into their own hands, the assailants did not exactly help the cause of those who have been accused of illegally settling on the land.
The relevant authorities will set a bad precedent if they decide to look the other way instead of bringing all those involved in the outrage to justice.
