Dar heightens security checks amid terror alert

 

Dar es Salaam residents walk past scanner machines at PPF Tower yesterday. PHOTO | VENANCE NESTORY      

By Henry Mwangonde and Eucylavender Tom, The Citizen Correspondents

In Summary

Now, metal detectors have been put in place in a bid to check what people carry with them as they enter public buildings in these cities.

Dar es Salaam. In what appears to be measures to prevent a repeat of Garissa-style terrorist attacks, authorities have beefed up security in most public buildings in the cities of Dar es Salaam, Mwanza and Kampala.

Now, metal detectors have been put in place in a bid to check what people carry with them as they enter public buildings in these cities.

A survey conducted by The Citizen in some large and busy public buildings in the city here established that most of them had security scanners installed at entrance points, whereby every person going in is checked.

The move to heighten security measures is not new in the city. Each time there is a terror-related attack in the country or elsewhere in East Africa, security would be beefed up only to be forgotten after a few weeks.

This was the case in 2013 after Al-Shabaab militants attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi killing 67 people.

However, in its survey, The Citizen established that not all public buildings had been installed with metal detactors as would have been expected.

At the PPF Tower on Ohio Street, all people going in had to be checked, something that was not the case before the recent Garissa attack in Kenya.

The situation was the same at the New Africa Hotel whereby all visitors going in had to undergo the security protocol.

At the Benjamin Mkapa Towers visitors where checked only in some sections of the building, while in others nothing was happening.

Meanwhile, the management operating the Kivukoni Ferry launched the process of checking all passengers as they boarded, something that caused complaints because it was taking too long to check each and everyone.

But, when The Citizen visited the facility yesterday, it established that the exercise that had caused a long queue during the festive season had been abandoned on the Magogoni side without any notice.

The developments in the city appear to be a response to last week’s al-Shabaab attacks on Garissa University College in which at least 148 people were killed.