Emirates air lines is planning to end delays by closing the boarding gate 15 minute before taking off, a statement revealed. “The 15minutes before departure gate closure is in consideration of customers who arrive on time for their flights.
It will allow aircraft to take off as scheduled as it takes about 15 minutes to locate and off load gabbage of missing or late customers”. Mohamed H Matter, Emirates senior vice president for airport services in Dubai, explained. The new policy, which is also aimed at ensuring customers do not miss connecting flight, took effect on June 22. Latecomers to the boarding gate will be left behind.
Passengers in transit who arrive late into Dubai will be helped by airport staff through formalities to make onward connections. Customers will be reminded about the policy when they check in. written reminders have been placed on e-tickets, tend cards in lounges, restaurants ad smoking areas.
The Association of Uganda Tour Operators has elected Henry Oketcho as its new chairperson. Oketcho works with Explore Uganda Safaris. He replaces Mel Gormley, who headed the association for the last two years. Gormley owns Classic Africa Safaris.
Jovino Akika, the former tourism state minister conducted the elections at the Kampala Serena Hotel. Akika is now the chairperson of the Uganda Tourist Association.
Cam Mcleay of Adrift Adventure Company will deputise Oketcho, while Barbra Vanhelleputte of Asyanut Safaris was retained as the secretary. Jane Goldring, a former committee member, was elected the new treasurer.
“We hope the new committee will unite tour operators and bring on board all of them to fight for a major cause,” said Geoffrey Baluku, the public relations officer.
Baluku said the new team would ensure transparency in the distribution of the permits to clients, as well as working with UWA on issues that affect the tourism industry.
Repairing of the Gulu-Lacor road will continue, Gulu municipality mayor Christopher Acire has said. The Uganda National Roads Authority had urged the municipality to start the repairs in 2010.
“In the last two years we have been struggling to raise money to start work on the Lacor road. This time, nothing will stop us from continuing with the work from Christ Church in town to Custom Corner, and later look for some more funds to finish up to Lacor.
“The Government has been singing about working on the road since 1996 but up to now no work has started on the road. So, how sure are we that the work will begin in 2010 as they are saying,” Acire said on Monday. The mayor’s remark came after reading a letter written by town clerk Mackay Opolot Odele, who is on leave, to the acting town Clerk, Vincent Opiyo.
Odele asked Opio to convene a meeting so that the council gets an alternative road to tarmac instead of Lacor road. The letter came after a meeting between the municipal technocrats and the UNRA officials in Gulu recently.
“It is not that we are stopping them from continuing with their plan.
“It’s because when a programme is on to tarmac a trunk road that passes through an urban authority, a link road of up to 5km into the urban centre from the trunk road is always tarmacked,” UNRA station engineer for Gulu, John Bigabwa, said. Acire said the council had raised sh400m to start the work.
Female chimpanzees are hungry for sex with as many males as possible, and keep their mouths shut about it to boost their chances of luring the top chimps, a British university said yesterday.
Scientists at the University of St. Andrews studied the copulation calls of sounds they sometimes make during mating of female chimpanzees in Uganda to find out more about what they mean.
The Scottish institution’s team concluded that female chimps sometimes keep quiet during sex so their female rivals do not find out what they have been up to.
Evolutionary psychologists Simon Townsend and Klaus Zuberbuhler studied chimp behavior in Uganda’s Budongo Forest over 16 months.
The team established that female chimpanzees hide their sexual activity when high-ranking females were nearby, perhaps in a bid to reduce competition for good quality males. This could prevent higher-ranking female chimpanzees from turning on them.
They also found the females produced more copulation calls when high-ranking males were around to attract them to have sex. The scientists believe that having sex with several males causes confusion among the male chimpanzees as to which one sired the offspring. The males are therefore less likely to kill any babies that might be theirs.
The study found no evidence that males were competing to have sex with females after they produced copulation calls, and no link between a female’s fertility and her use of the calls.
“Chimpanzee females adjusted their calling behavior in flexible ways, potentially to avoid aggression from other females and possibly to secure future benefits from the socially important males,” the study said, “Competition between females can be dangerously high in wild chimpanzees. These females use their copulation calls in highly tactical ways to minimize the risks associated with such competition.”
Members of the East African Community are set to sign an agreement that will set up an organisation to manage Lake Victoria. The decision to sign a water Release and Abstraction policy was agreed on last week in Zanzibar where member states agreed to establish “ an independent and transparent mechanism “ for monitoring the status of the lake.
Water and environmental minister Maria Mutagambe said: “the agreement will enable us to know how much water we are using and , therefore how best utilize the lake.” She said a study was commissioned two years ago to find out the lake’s abstraction. ‘We hired a consultant who has been given up to the end of this year to report the findings to the Lake Victoria Basin Commission.” She said although the new Agreed Curve Limits partitioning the lake between Uganda,Kenya and Tanzania had not yet been ratified, developments on the lake would goon until the signing of the covenant. “Tanzania had originally wanted to put a caveat on development projects, but the proposal was rejected by other members,” she said.
Earlier this moth, Egypt had also called for a pact in which it would have a say on any developments undertaken by Uganda that would affect the flow of River Nile, on which it heavily depends