News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

Woman found alive 6-days after building collapse

Posted: 05 May 2016 04:24 AM PDT

Rescue workers were racing to dig out a woman found alive under the rubble of a building in Nairobi six days after it collapsed.

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Nairobi - Rescue workers were racing on Thursday to dig out a woman found alive under the rubble of a building in Kenya's capital six days after it collapsed, a senior officials at the site said.

The woman, who was receiving oxygen and had been connected to an intravenous drip by doctors, had survived in a pocket of broken masonry since the building crumbled on Friday night.

“She cannot move but she is safe,” Pius Masai, an official leading the operation, told reporters after the woman was located. He said she had spoken to doctors on site.

Rescue workers were working with their hands and power tools to reach her.

The death toll from the collapse of the building has reached 35, another official at the site said. Including the woman now being dug out, workers have rescued a total of 137 people.

Earlier this week they had said there was little chance of finding any more survivors, although a baby was pulled out of the wreckage on Tuesday, dehydrated but with no sign of other injuries.

The building in Nairobi's Huruma district collapsed after days of heavy rain.

The Interior Ministry said the building had been built close to a river and earmarked for demolition, but the local authorities had not acted on the order.

The building's collapse was the latest such disaster in a rapidly-expanding African city that is struggling to build homes fast enough.

Several other buildings in Nairobi have crumbled in recent years, but without such a high death toll.

Reuters

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Corruption destroys journalism ethics: Zim editor

Posted: 04 May 2016 11:33 PM PDT

A veteran Zimbabwean journalist has lamented viability problems dogging media houses in the country.

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Harare - A veteran Zimbabwean journalist has lamented viability problems dogging media houses in the country and the poor remuneration and delayed salaries for journalists which he said were largely responsible for the unprecedented levels of corruption in the media that has led to a decline in ethical and professional standards.

In a speech at the annual Bornwell Chakaodza Memorial Lecture in Harare, Dumisani Muleya, Editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, said corruption had not only destroyed journalism standards in the country but had become like a government policy.

“Corruption is creeping in the media. The media never used to be very corrupt in this country, but it is now corrupt. It is a fact that journalists take money to stop writing certain stories. It is a serious problem in the media now. We have to battle this one because it is almost like an official policy in government. If you are not corrupt, you are seen as a stupid person, people think that you are a danger to them because you will expose them,” he said.

Muleya attributed the high rise in corruption to the current economic environment, where the majority of the people, journalists included, were living in poverty.

The environment, the problem is we are living in an environment where the economy is not performing, it is actually collapsing and people don’t have money.

“In the media it was not like that. People used to do their job, that is why journalists actually remain your poor lot in society as well, because they were not corrupt. But now they are suffering, there are a lot of social problems and quite a hell lot of them are corrupt. Very corrupt.

“They take money to avoid writing stories. Even when there is evidence to the story, the story is not written and when you approach the guy to ask why he has not written the story, they have their explanation. They will tell you they doubt the authenticity of the documents,” he said.

Muleya, however, said economic challenges should not be used as an excuse for journalists to engage in corrupt activities, saying if the scourge was left to take root in the media, it would virtually become second to nature as there would be no one to play the watchdog role.

“Corruption is bad, it is an evil in society that must be fought. Journalists must never entertain this idea that because we are poor and we don’t have money, so we resort to corruption because it means we are destroying ourselves, we are destroying the whole country, the very institutions that we are working for that should help us move forward, that is the media organisations,” he said.

He urged reporters to take advantage of available news outlets to publish their stories should they suspect that editors were not publishing their stories because they would have been bribed.

“The good thing is that these days there are alternatives, if the editor refuses to publish your story, it must always come out somewhere, there are other platforms on the social media and online publications,” he said.

– African News Agency

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