Ebenezer T. bifubyeka (Ten),Biafra, Mbarara in Western Uganda.
Manufacturers of buveera (polythene bags) have secured a court injunction – stopping Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) from charging the 120 percent excise duty on buveera above the recommended 30 microns (gauge size) and above (See The New Vision of February 24, 2009).
This follows threats by URA to sell off manufacturers’ factories to recover about sh7b in tax arrears since 120 percent levy was imposed in the Excise Tariff Act Amendment of 2008. The manufacturers want the court to allow them pay 10 percent of the tax!
If the government reduces this tax against buveera, they (buveera) would be abundantly produced and widely supplied thus utterly polluting the soil. Buveera should be banned rather than levying tax against them.
Buveera don’t stop at blocking drainage channels and create stagnant water in which mosquitoes (supply agents of malaria – Uganda’s leading killer disease) breed; they also pollute the soil that has already run out of nutrients.
The soil expert at Makerere University of Kampala, Professor Mateete Bekunda says, our soils have grown old and unproductive due to climate change (Uganda’s temperature has become hotter by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees in the previous century – resulting to unreliable rain patterns)!
According to a Bekunda, studies indicate that areas around Lake Victoria basin, Bunyoro and Eastern Uganda can no longer sustain crops to meet challenges of a rapidly growing population of Uganda (of 3.6 percent per year – one of the world’s fastest rates).
After Uganda’s ban on buveera packed three months after it was imposed, supermarkets and shops resorted to packing their customers’ items in buveera. Besides cooking food covered with buveera, which practice contaminates food with liquefied cancerous chemical that comes out of the heated buveera; people litter them anywhere thus blocking water infiltration to the soil!
National environmental management authority’s western regional public awareness officer, Jeconious Musingwire says, buveera take a whole millennium to decay! To him, apple cores, banana rinds and orange peels, paper tissue, cigarettes and matches take three to six months to molder. But a kaveera takes 1,000 years to decompose!
Let’s emulate an advert on Vision Radio where: a man shouts at somebody who has thrown a kaveera on the street as though he is a thief! The mocked man gets ashamed and says, ‘Ok; stop shouting and I take my kaveera to the garbage skip.’ If we don’t shout at people littering buveera, our soils will be completely rendered useless.
Let’s save our exhausted soil of pollutant buveera. Fortunately, for our soils, in January 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa awarded US$18m (about sh34.2b) to international centre for tropical agriculture.
The money is for producing the first ever detailed digital map for all 42 countries in the region – including Uganda. The project intends to provide solutions to poor farmers suffering from chronic low-yielding crops mainly due to degraded soils.
This project may buy Prof. Bekunda’s suggestion that farmers should use chemical fertilisers for quicker release of nutrients. But Chemical fertilisers contaminate soil with nitrogen, phosphorus run offs and large amounts nitrates (salts), which are washed away by rain to water supplies. This causes lots of algae that deplete oxygen supply in water thus endangering aquatic life!
Although organic fertilisers are slow to break down, they are safe to the environment and animals. Organic fertilisers will boost the current low levels of phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, zinc and manganese in our soil – hence restoring the soil pH (how healthy the soil is) – and increase food productivity. But this will be fruitless if we don’t eliminate buveera from our vicinity.
Manufacturers of buveera (polythene bags) have secured a court injunction – stopping Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) from charging the 120 percent excise duty on buveera above the recommended 30 microns (gauge size) and above (See The New Vision of February 24, 2009).
This follows threats by URA to sell off manufacturers’ factories to recover about sh7b in tax arrears since 120 percent levy was imposed in the Excise Tariff Act Amendment of 2008. The manufacturers want the court to allow them pay 10 percent of the tax!
If the government reduces this tax against buveera, they (buveera) would be abundantly produced and widely supplied thus utterly polluting the soil. Buveera should be banned rather than levying tax against them.
Buveera don’t stop at blocking drainage channels and create stagnant water in which mosquitoes (supply agents of malaria – Uganda’s leading killer disease) breed; they also pollute the soil that has already run out of nutrients.
The soil expert at Makerere University of Kampala, Professor Mateete Bekunda says, our soils have grown old and unproductive due to climate change (Uganda’s temperature has become hotter by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees in the previous century – resulting to unreliable rain patterns)!
According to a Bekunda, studies indicate that areas around Lake Victoria basin, Bunyoro and Eastern Uganda can no longer sustain crops to meet challenges of a rapidly growing population of Uganda (of 3.6 percent per year – one of the world’s fastest rates).
After Uganda’s ban on buveera packed three months after it was imposed, supermarkets and shops resorted to packing their customers’ items in buveera. Besides cooking food covered with buveera, which practice contaminates food with liquefied cancerous chemical that comes out of the heated buveera; people litter them anywhere thus blocking water infiltration to the soil!
National environmental management authority’s western regional public awareness officer, Jeconious Musingwire says, buveera take a whole millennium to decay! To him, apple cores, banana rinds and orange peels, paper tissue, cigarettes and matches take three to six months to molder. But a kaveera takes 1,000 years to decompose!
Let’s emulate an advert on Vision Radio where: a man shouts at somebody who has thrown a kaveera on the street as though he is a thief! The mocked man gets ashamed and says, ‘Ok; stop shouting and I take my kaveera to the garbage skip.’ If we don’t shout at people littering buveera, our soils will be completely rendered useless.
Let’s save our exhausted soil of pollutant buveera. Fortunately, for our soils, in January 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa awarded US$18m (about sh34.2b) to international centre for tropical agriculture.
The money is for producing the first ever detailed digital map for all 42 countries in the region – including Uganda. The project intends to provide solutions to poor farmers suffering from chronic low-yielding crops mainly due to degraded soils.
This project may buy Prof. Bekunda’s suggestion that farmers should use chemical fertilisers for quicker release of nutrients. But Chemical fertilisers contaminate soil with nitrogen, phosphorus run offs and large amounts nitrates (salts), which are washed away by rain to water supplies. This causes lots of algae that deplete oxygen supply in water thus endangering aquatic life!
Although organic fertilisers are slow to break down, they are safe to the environment and animals. Organic fertilisers will boost the current low levels of phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, zinc and manganese in our soil – hence restoring the soil pH (how healthy the soil is) – and increase food productivity. But this will be fruitless if we don’t eliminate buveera from our vicinity.
Ends.
Word count: 598.
1 comment:
Hi "TEN", welcome and thanks for your comment about Julio on our blog.
Keep up the environmental works.
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