TANZANIA – Kilombero Sugar Company (KSC) has donated 30,000 litres of alcohol to the Tanzanian government to aid in the production of hand sanitizers amid the spread of the corona virus in the country.
The support, which the Morogoro-based firm extended, is meant to complement the government’s initiatives towards mitigating the pandemic.
Since the detection of the first case of Covid-19 in the country the demand for hand sanitizers has increased appreciably, creating greater need for the commodity and hence more demand for alcohol for production purposes among local manufacturers.
Kilombero Sugar Company has accordingly decided to donate the alcohol, which is produced from molasses – a by-product in sugar production.
KSC commercial director Fimbo Butallah revealed that the company recently had an audience with the Industry and Trade minister Innocent Bashungwa.
“From him we learned that one of the major challenges facing the country during this crisis is limited availability of affordable hand sanitizers as well as increased demand for alcohol for manufacturers of the sanitizers,” he said.
The director expressed hope that with KSC’s contribution, manufacturers of the commodity “will be incentivised and ultimately produce enough sanitizers for the market and sell at reasonable prices.”
To further cement its efforts to complement the government’s initiatives towards curbing the spread of Covid-19, KSC has issued a 22 per cent discount on the price of the alcohol it sells to manufactures.
“We used to sell the alcohol to manufacturers at Tz1, 280 per litre but, with this discount, our alcohol will now be sold at Tz1, 000 per litre. We hope this will help the end user to get hand sanitizers at a more reasonable price,” said Butallah.
“We had 100,000 litres of alcohol in stock, of which 30,000 litres have already been given to the government and 60,000 litres will be sold to manufactures at the 22 per cent price discount per litre,” he said.
“We will ourselves use the remaining 10,000 litres in producing sanitizers.”
The sanitizers produced by the sugar manufacturer will then be distributed free of charge to all KSC employees, individual sugarcane growers and members of the communities in the vicinity of Kilombero Valley.
“We believe that this pandemic is in our hands, and we have no option but to work together in fighting it,” the director declared.
Other companies like Accra Brewery Limited in Ghana have launched their support to the communities to fight the spread of COVID-19 with 10,000 Bottles of Hand Sanitizers in 150ml containers.
“These bottles will be distributed to the Ghana Health Services to support the health care front liners working in our community hospitals and also to our neighboring communities,” the company stated.
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