I AM writing this from the shores of Lake Victoria, a lake with cardinal importance to the local and international fishing communities.
The Lake Victoria Fishing Organisation (LVSO) is encouraging fish farming, especially for small-scale farmers. Recently, the Organisation sent fish farmers and officials from Ilemela District, Mwanza, to Kajjansi Aquaculture Research and Development Centre, in Uganda to learn about fish feed production.
This is reported on page 12 of the Daily Blog of 10 September, in a feature article titled: “Fish feed education vital in fish production”. In the course of the article, a proposal is made, that fish feed should be produced on a small-scale by groups of fish farmers.
However, an official noted that you needed a large plant that would feed the whole of the Lake Victoria Zone. The plant is, however, quite costly.
This is how the writer quotes this official: “The 200,000 to 250,000 USD is a huge amount ‘to’ fish farmers, but the government can set an enabling environment for them, through giving the plant ‘in a loan basis’”.
I would change two phrases in the sentence above from what they are, to something else: “to fish farmers” would be “for fish farmers”; and, “in a loan basis” would be: “on a loan basis”. The rewritten sentence is as follows: “200,000 to 250,000 USD is a huge amount of money ‘for’ fish farmers, but the government can set an enabling environment for them, by giving them the plant ‘on a loan basis.’”
Apparently, fish farming involves the use of cages, which could be either round, or rectangular.
An official in the know, is reported to have given a warning: “She cautioned that the round cages are somehow expensive compared to ‘that’ of rectangle shape, because the former ‘consumes’ lots of raw materials”.
The above sentence has got a problem of matching the forms of nouns and verbs. The writer, for example, talks of comparing round cages to “that” of rectangle shape. “that” should be “those”, to reflect the fact that the round cages are many and should therefore be matched to the ones of the rectangle shape. “Rectangle shape” is best presented as “rectangular”. Besides, given that the round cages are many, we cannot say that they “consumes” lots of raw material.
They “consume” lots of raw materials. A recommended re-write is as follows: “She cautioned that the round cages are somehow expensive compared to ‘those’ that are rectangular, because the former ‘consume’ lots of raw materials”.
An official urged the Tanzanian government to require the Vocational Education and Training Centres (VTCs) to manufacture the round cages and make them available to fish farmers in terms of loans: “VCT’s should ‘get in’ contracts with fish farmers’ groups for cage manufacturing and let the ‘loners’ make the ‘refund’ in ‘installments’, during ‘fish harvest’ seasons”.
It is difficult to understand what the writer had in mind by the word “loners”. A loner is somebody who stays aloof, and does not mix easily with others. He stays alone most of the time. In the quoted sentence, we are told of loners making a refund.
It looks like the writer got the word “loner” from “loan”. If you take a loan, however, you are not a “loner”, but, a borrower. It is proposed that the sentence be re-written as follows: “VCTs should ‘enter into’ contracts with fish farmers’ groups for cage manufacturing and let the ‘borrowers’ ‘repay the loans’ in ‘instalments’, during the ‘fish harvesting’ seasons”.
We end up by reading this new item in the Custodian (29 September, p 3), in which we are told that the local brewer, Serengeti Breweries Limited, has vowed to support people with disabilities: “and help the government achieve economic growth without leaving ‘no one’ behind”. No. “Without leaving ‘any one’ behind”.
Bravo, Serengeti Breweries!
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