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Wanted: A culture of formulating and obeying regulations
New study says Tanzanian media is sitting on the fence in the face of a lack of AI awareness and literacy, questions about its potential impact on job security, and ethical implications.
What you need to know:
- Without regulations, land owners may not set aside land for public goods such as roads, drains, open spaces and land for public uses such as land for schools, health centres, cemeteries, waste disposal sites and so on.
As considerations for the Tanzania Development Vision 2050 continue, one area which needs serious consideration is a culture of making and obeying regulations. In an earlier article, we argued for a culture of maintenance of the assets that we acquire including expensive assets such as roads, dams, railway lines, buildings, drains, machinery and equipment, and others. In this article we highlight the need for regulation: formulating relevant regulations and enforcing them as a key aspect of modern life.
We hear of personal freedom hailed with regard to developed countries, yet these countries are highly regulated. Most activities that people undertake have regulations governing them. In developing countries, like Tanzania, however, regulations are either missing, or exist but are not enforced, or are indeed irrelevant.
It is in countries like ours that a person can wake up in the morning and start making any kind of noise without anybody questioning. It is in countries like ours that a land owner can wake up one day, subdivide and sell his land, and the buyer starts construction forthwith without consulting anybody. On our roads, we see most drivers and other road users caring the least about traffic regulations. Food will be cooked and consumed anywhere without any reference to regulations. Business can be run anywhere. Buildings are put up, occupied and used or changed, without adherence to any regulations.
Yet, regulations are important for our economic and social well being; even our health. Regulation is one of the basic duties of government related with ensuring law and order. A key justification for government regulation is to address market failure. This requires the government to provide public goods, to deal with positive and negative externalities and to address equity and social merit issues. Where there is no regulation, chaos reigns high and this can be costly. One area which needs very close regulation is property and real estate. This is realised through land use planning, zoning, building regulations and environmental protection.
Without regulations, land owners may not set aside land for public goods such as roads, drains, open spaces and land for public uses such as land for schools, health centres, cemeteries, waste disposal sites and so on.
Without regulation, property values may not be realised. Take a situation where money is invested in real estate but which cannot be easily accessed because of lack of roads. The value of such property remains unrealised since the market value of such property in terms of sale or rental prices remains subdued.
Without regulation, you can find a 10-storey building side by side with a one storey shack. Regulations ensure that incompatible uses are not put together. You do not need a polluting factory in the middle of a residential area, since this produces negative externalities, which can bring down the value of a whole neighbourhood.
Regulations address such issues as building setbacks and plot ratios. Many authorities regulate for the type of building materials as well as finishes that can be adopted in a particular area or neighbourhood. Again, many regulations address issues such as fire precautions in building and environmental sustainability of neighbourhoods and settlements.
Regulations, too, address structural stability of building so that they do not collapse and cause harm to people and property.
The unplanned neighbourhoods we see in our urban areas; the chaos we see on our roads, are all a result of lack, or non-enforcement of regulations, which results into high costs to society. While regulations are necessary, they must be relevant and enforceable. We do have many regulations in our books which cannot be enforced; and a few can be cited here.
Urban Planning (Building) Regulations of 2018, published under the Urban Planning Act, 2007, addresses the question of occupation of a new building as follows: “A person shall not occupy or cause to be occupied any new building until the Authority has granted a certificate, in the Form 10 prescribed in the Fourth Schedule, that such building is in every respect fit for occupation, or in the case of a residential building, fit for human habitation”. The building must be completed in three years of the grant of a building permit, and it must conform to the stipulations contained in the building permit.
Such regulations are cosmetic since very few common households seek building permits; but even more importantly, few can complete their buildings in the stipulated period, to the extent that most buildings are occupied when they are unfinished. Thus, to require builders to obtain a building occupation permit is not practicable. You need regulations that take into consideration that most households build incrementally over many years and they may never ever get their properties to completion.
While therefore we need a culture of formulating regulations on the part of the government, we also need a culture of complying with these regulations among the population. To facilitate this, regulations must be those that are relevant to the situation to which they are addressing; otherwise they remain unenforceable.
