Tanzania plans to enact law to monitor, regulate scrap metals business

Tanzanian government said on Tuesday it was drafting a Bill designed to enact a law that will monitor and regulate the increasing tidal wave of the scrap metals business in the east African nation.

Charles Mwijage, the Minister for Industries, Trade and Investment, told the National Assembly in the political capital Dodoma that the government has decided to enact the law following increased theft of key infrastructure instruments that were sold as scrap metals.

He said the Tanzania Electric Supply Company Limited (TANESCO), Tanzania National Roads Agency (TANROADS) and Reli-Assets-Holding-Company (RAHCO) were the most affected infrastructures.

"People were vandalizing these structures and sell their parts as scrap metal. This business must be stopped," Mwijage told the august House.

He added: "The scrap metal business in different parts of the country is seriously fuelling the looting of crucial infrastructure calling for the need to enact law that will monitor the practice."

Mwijage was responding to a question posed by Fakharia Khamis, a Member of Parliament who had wanted to know measures the government was taking to control the increasing spate of thefts of useful metals from state-owned companies.

Khamis, an MP on the ticket of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), said the scrap metal business was forcing some unscrupulous members of the community to even steal useful metals from individuals.

"If the government will not take appropriate measures to monitor the flow of this business the damage will be irreplaceable," said the lawmaker.

In recent years there has been endless public outcry that the mushrooming arbitrary scrap metal business is to a large extent accelerating sabotage of electricity, water and other key public infrastructures across the country. Endit