DIT TO TRAIN LOCALS ON CNG AS DEMAND CLIMBS

AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology (DIT) is planning to train Tanzanian automobile mechanics with skills of converting fuel into Compressed Natural Gas (CNG).

The move comes after a big number of Tanzanians opting to have their cars converted into using CNG, where the institute currently converts up to 60 cars a month with the demand keep on growing.

Dr Esabi Nyari, CNG coordinator at the Institute, said in an interview that the move aims at decentralizing conversion process to local mechanical places and supporting local technicians to benefit from income opportunities arising from such a sector.

“Tanzania Petroleum Cooperation (TPDC) has issued and expression of interest for interested bidders to tender establishment of CNG filling stations. This implies increasing number of petrol igniting vehicle owners to convert them to gas system,” said Dr Nyari.

He said that DIT which is ready started the conversion exercise, has already set plans to offer a short course capacitated to accommodate 20 mechanical technicians a month which will start as the college lockdown due to spreading corona virus comes to an end.

Dr Nyari said that the course will be offered in both, theoretical and practical mode, where after a month, participating technicians will be competent to conduct the conversion works and repair in case of faults.

On the benefits of car owners turning to natural gas, Dr Nyari explained that they would cut up to 60 percent of the among spend on other forms of fuels and it reversers air pollution by more than 90 percent.

Other plans by the for DIT was to pioneer training to drivers, car owners and traffic police officers with basic knowledge of dealing with the vehicles converted to using CNG gas as it is a new system introduced.

Currently DIT has already converted up around 350 cars to use CNG system since 2018 according to Dr Nyari.

Tanzania has considerable huge deposits of natural gas, part of which is being used to produce electricity to the national grid while some blocks in the Southern regions of Lindi and Mtwara are being negotiated between investors and government before extraction can take place.