October 3, 2018 | Morning Headlines

Senate Warns Political Row In Galmudug Damaging State Institutions, Urges Restrain

02 October – Source: Goobjoog News – 155 Words

The Senate has called on leaders of Galmudug to de-escalate the ongoing political row and give the Senate committees a chance to conclude the mediation process. The Senate further observed that actions taken by the warring factions to fire state government employees was unconstitutional.

In a terse statement on Tuesday, the Senate Business Committee chaired by Speaker Abdi Hashi, expressed concern over the political situation in the central regions state noting that actions by the warring factions were detrimental to destroying the institutions of the state: “The actions taken by both parties to the political conflict is unacceptable because it is destroying the institutions of the state (Parliament and Executive)”.

This is happening as the Senate is mediating to find a lasting solution between the Federal Government and Federal Member States. The Committee also called on both sides to restore the cooperation they had before and protect the unity and cooperation between the government institutions.

Key Headlines

• Senate Warns Political Row In Galmudug Damaging State Institutions Urges Restrain (Goobjoog News)
• Somalia Poised For Ban On Right-hand Drive Cars Amid Road Safety Concerns (Hiiraan Online)
• Somalia Bans Sale Of TB Drugs (Halbeeg News)
• International Community Calls For End To Hergeisa And Mogadishu Hostilities (Capital FM)
• Hunger Disease And Violence: Is Somalia the Worst Place In The World To Be A Child? (The Telegraph)

NATIONAL MEDIA

Somalia Poised For Ban On Right-hand Drive Cars Amid Road Safety Concerns

02 October – Source: Hiiraan Online – 242 Words

The Somali government has said it is prepared to ban the imports and use of the right-hand drive vehicles in an attempt to improve road safety in the Horn of Africa nation, which is recovering from decades of civil unrest. Across the country, motorists drive on the right-hand side of the road, while over 80 percent of the vehicles are right-hand drive models.

Mohamed Abdullahi Salad, Transportation and Civil Aviation Minister said implementation of the ban will begin by early October: “The safety of our roads is a key priority for us, thus banning right-hand drive vehicles that are largely associated with most of the accidents on our roads. This is the first step to be taken in improving the safety of roads,” he said.

Meanwhile car dealers have warned that the move could cause untold loses to dealers of car spare parts. The dealers are worried over the impact of the impending ban, with some saying they have to cancel shipments of new right-hand drive cars coming to the country. Under the proposal rule, car-owners will be required to have their steering columns changed from the right to the left.

“The government will also require all auto shop owners to get certification from the Transport minister,” the minister said in the interview, noting that traffic police would start enforcing the new policy. According to the new 24-clause traffic law, the ban will not affect right-hand-drive cars already imported into the country.

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Somalia Bans Sale Of TB Drugs

02 October – Source: Halbeeg News – 186 Words

The Somali government has prohibited the selling of anti-tuberculosis drugs in pharmacies and drugstores. Ms. Fowzia Abukar Noor, Somali Health Minister attributed the decision to irregularity in the administration of these drugs to patients and lack of proper monitoring which is hindering efforts to check the disease

“Tuberculosis (TB) in Somalia has affected the public badly. We are supported by partners to provide free medicine to the patients. But there are imported counterfeit drugs, which undermines treatment of tuberculosis,” the minister said.

She called on the patients to seek free medicine and not spend their money on counterfeit drugs:
“I warn people against the over-the-counter-purchase, yet they can get drugs free of charge. Rather than taking the counterfeit drug, it is better for one to stay without medication,” she advised.

The latest estimate for all forms of TB in Somalia was 290 per 100 000 population in 2009. The incidence of sputum smear-positive cases was 160 per 100 000 population. In recent years, high reported incidence rates of TB have made it a priority for national health authorities, the World Health Organization (WHO) and their partners.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

International Community Calls For End To Hergeisa And Mogadishu Hostilities

02 October – Source: Capital FM – 653 Words

Pressure is mounting on Somaliland and Somalia to sit on a round table and sort their political and border disputes. The international community wants talks between the leadership in Hergeisa (Somaliland) and Mogadishu (Somalia) to re-open dialogue to end the cold war between them. Somaliland government has stated they are ready for a fresh round of talks after the Netherlands and Danish envoys to Kenya (and Somalia) said they would be ready to help initiate dialogue.

Nairobi has been identified as one of the potential venues for the talks which have previously collapsed after agreements have been signed with both sides accusing each other of reneging on the signed deals. Somaliland, a former British protectorate proclaimed independence from the rest of Somalia after the collapse of the central government of Somalia led by the late dictator General Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

However, the international community is yet to recognize Somaliland’s sovereignty though the nation has diplomatic relations with several countries where it has liaison offices. Somaliland is pushing for complete freedom from the rest of Somalia while the Federal Government of Somalia wants to retain the unity of Somalia.

The two countries have failed to agree on several issues among them the control of airspace despite several meetings to resolve the issue. Since 2012, there have been several meetings and talks between Somaliland and Somalia, including Istanbul II Communiqué, where the two parties agreed on establishing the Air Traffic Control Board (headquartered in Hargeisa, Somaliland) and four members of technical committee (two from Somaliland and two from Somalia).

This agreement was supported by the United Nations envoy in Somalia/Somaliland and the head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia at the time, Nicholas Kay, who described the agreement as a model for other areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. The U.N.’s aviation agency began controlling air traffic over Somalia after the county descended into civil war. Due to security concerns, the organization worked from Kenya until 2017 when the government of Somalia took the control of the airspace from ICAO.

OPINION, ANALYSIS AND CULTURE

“Save the Children has trained community volunteers to try to track the movement of nomadic families. Next door to the clinic, other volunteers train Somali women in techniques that could often save lives. Mothers are taught how to use the coloured tape measures so they themselves can see if their children have become malnourished.”

Hunger, Disease And Violence: Is Somalia the Worst Place In The World To Be A Child?

02 October – Source: The Telegraph – 2088 Words

Somalis are used to hardship. Hunger, pestilence and violent death have brooded over their desiccated land ever since the first clans reached the Horn of Africa more than a millennium ago.
It is not in the Somali national character, enamelled by suffering, to complain. Setbacks are shrugged off and mortality contemplated with disdain. “I never saw a Somali who showed any fear of death,” wrote Gerald Hanley, the Irish author, who lived among them in the Forties.

Yet, even for the hardiest, the past decade has been testing. Somalia is a nation of nomads. Of every five Somalis, four are pastoralists, moving their flocks and herds with the weather.
Such a life is fragile. When the rains fail, as they often do, the livestock sicken and die. Competition between Somalia’s myriad clans and sub-clans often leads to conflict, but in barren times the clan is also a great source of strength: water, grazing and breeding stock are shared in order to save the community’s lives.

But twice over the past ten years, the droughts have been so long and so relentless, failing over successive seasons, that even the old men say they cannot remember a time of such climate-related wretchedness. Across great swathes of Somalia, 80 percent of livestock has died as pasture withered and wells dried under skies that remained remorselessly blue — a cull, blamed on a deadly combination of climate change and overgrazing, that is unprecedented in living memory.

When animals die in such vast numbers, all go hungry — but Somalis, deprived of their livelihoods, know that it is their children, denied adequate sustenance, who are the least likely to survive.

There are many reasons why life is so precarious for Somali children. Decades of civil conflict since the country’s implosion in 1991 have stunted development. For more than 20 years, Somalia did not have a government at all, depriving much of the population of life-saving services, from basic sanitation to rudimentary health care.

Insecurity, worsened in recent years by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab taking over substantial pockets of the country, meant that aid agencies often struggled to reach the most vulnerable communities. As a result more than half of Somali children are unvaccinated, a figure that is one of the highest in the world and which also closely matches the number of children not in school.

Yet it is almost certainly the widespread drought of recent years that explains why Somalia emerged this year as the world’s deadliest place to be a child, a country where, according to UNICEF and the World Bank, one in seven children will not live to see their fifth birthday.