Consultative Meetings
“Getting together is a beginning”, as the saying goes, has proven right as a good number of intensive consultations between UTPC and various stakeholders far yielded some remarkable, preliminary successes.
“Getting together is a beginning”, as the saying goes, has proven right as a good number of intensive consultations between UTPC and various stakeholders far yielded some remarkable, preliminary successes.
For instance, UTPC has had some close consultations so far with Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda, a score of Ministers, Inspector General of Police Said Mwema, District and Regional Commissioners.
Other strategic partners whom UTPC had consultations with include Members of Parliament, Regional Police Commanders, City Directors, farmers and pastoralists, such marginalized ethnic communities as the Maasai and Wahadzabe, Editors of media outlets and some Media Owners.
The said consultations followed brutal killing of a Channel 10 correspondent also Chairperson of Iringa Press Club (IPC), the late Daudi Mwangosi by the Police Force on a fateful 2nd September, 2012 day.
The tragic death, which sparked a storm of protests among journalism practitioners in the country, coupled with furry and condemnation, occurred at Nyololo, in Iringa region, while the deceased person was on duty, covering a political party’s function for his Dar es Salaam-based Television station.
Discussions with politicians, Regional Police Commanders, lawyers, human rights activists, government officials, editors, media owners and religious leaders have been going on ever since generally to ensure journalists’ safety as well as improve living conditions freelancers operating from the regions, who constitute between 75% and 80% of all the practitioners in Tanzania, on the one hand.
Talks with Regional Police Commanders , on the other, specifically aimed at building trust between itself and the Media, creating awareness of the roles and functions of both parties and creating a platform upon which the media and the Police personnel would resolve issues between them rather amicably.
Dialogue with politicians was widely viewed as a golden opportunity for both parties to have an enlarged, better understanding of each one’s role and functions in the Society.
Yet talks with the media owners focused on unbearable working conditions under which reporters operate, negligible press freedom and wanton violation of professional ethics.
