Academic literature on the topic 'Work environment – Malawi'

Cassava, a crop widely adapted in the tropics, has the important attribute of withstanding adverse environmental conditions better than do many other staple crops. The performance of an individual genotype, however, is influenced by the environment in which it grows. In Malawi, the heterogeneity of agro-ecologies requires the cumbersome and costly assessment of new cassava genotypes at many sites. This study was conducted, therefore, to test the feasibility of selecting only a few locations for cassava evaluation that would be representative of all the agro-ecologies in which cassava is grown in Malawi. Enormous environmental effects, largely contributed by the interaction between season and location, were manifested. Genotype×environment interaction, due largely to a third level interaction (genotype×season×location), was highly significant for all the traits studied. A principal component analysis scatter plot showed no particular grouping of environments, but a pair-wise comparison showed that some of the locations had limited genotype×environment interaction, indicating that it would be sufficient to use one of these sites for evaluating these traits. The value of the residual was often large, probably as an effect of environmental heterogeneity in the test sites. The authors conclude that cassava genetic improvement will continue to be slow if Malawi is used as a single breeding zone. They recommend a much finer grouping of the locations and the use of smaller plot sizes to allow more clones to be tested at more sites for the same cost. Locations may be selected for intensive cassava breeding work from those that give the best discrimination between genotypes while having insignificant genotype×environment interactions in a relatively large number of environments.

Purpose: To investigate and describe the nature and extent of violence against nurses and the perceived effects thereof on nurses in the southern region of Malawi.Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional study in which 190 questionnaires were sent out to nurses from five facilities, 112 were returned completed (60% response rate). The five facilities included two central hospitals, one psychiatric hospital and two health care centres.Results: 86% of the respondents agreed that violence against nurses is a problem in Malawi. The prevalence of violence for the five facilities in the preceding 12 months was 71% (CI 61%–79%) and was highest at the psychiatric hospital (100%). The types of violence experienced include verbal abuse (95%), threatening behaviours (73%), physical assaults (22%), sexual harassments (16%) and other (3%). Perpetrators of violence were: patients (71%); patients' relatives (47%); and work colleagues (43%). Nurses reacted to incidents of violence by reporting to managers, telling their friends, crying, retaliating, or ignoring the incident. Most (80%) nurses perceived that violence has psychological effects on them, which consequently affects their work performance and make them lose interest in the nursing profession.Conclusions: Workplace violence against nurses exists in Malawi and it affects nurses psychologically; may result in poor work performance; and may be a causative factor in the attrition of nurses from the nursing profession. The study recommends that health facilities should adopt policies aimed at minimizing violence against nurses to create motivating and safe working environment for nurses.

Background: Nurses are expected to provide comprehensive, holistic and ethically accepted care according to their code of ethics and practice. However, in Malawi, this is not always the case. This article analyses moral competence concept using the Walker and Avant's strategy of concept analysis. Objective: The aim of this article is to analyse moral competence concept in relation to nursing practice and determine defining attributes, antecedents and consequences of moral competence in nursing practice. Method: Analysis of moral competence concept was done using Walker and Avant's strategy of concept analysis. Results: Deductive analysis was used to find the defining attributes of moral competence, which were kindness, compassion, caring, critical thinking, ethical decision making ability, problem solving, responsibility, discipline, accountability, communication, solidarity, honesty, and respect for human values, dignity and rights. The identified antecedents were personal, cultural and religious values; nursing ethics training, environment and guidance. The consequences of moral competence are team work spirit, effective communication, improved performance and positive attitudes in providing nursing care. Conclusion: Moral competence can therefore be used as a tool to improve care in nursing practice to meet patients' problems and needs and consequently increase public's satisfaction in Malawi.

This article chronicles a crisis of alignment regarding Critical Pedagogy due to the top-down power structures of White authority that is pervasive in the theory’s North American academic environment. Contesting the often touted “radical” or “revolutionary” nature of Critical Pedagogy in higher education spaces, the author questions his relationship with Paulo Freire’s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, ultimately abandoning the content of writing over the way the theory/philosophy is lived in academia. Through the lived experience of engaging with community in the James Bay Cree territories and Malawi, the question is asked as to who owns Freire’s rebellious call to action.

The accountancy profession subscribes to the values of accountability, integrity, honesty, accuracy among others and that is the reason accountants are required in any field of work to provide an independent report of how the resources are deployed to bring the outcome and assess if indeed the outcome from the use of such resources is as it had been expected by all the stakeholders. This requirement is common to all sectors of the economy, whether in the public or private sector. The paper discusses the changing role of the accountant in the public sector in response to the growing concerns of public resource abuse. Africa, Malawi in particular, has been a victim of gross resource abuse by public officers through among others fraud, corruption, theft and gross mismanagement. Malawi has recently been rated highly in terms of corrupt practices with the public sector taking a leading position leading to gross mismanagement of public resources since the dawn of democracy in 1994. The study takes a look at the changing roles of an accountant in the public sector where the control environment in the financial management system, and the political will of those in charge of the public sector, are not the same as those in the private sector. The accounting weaknesses or challenges as revealed by the reviewed audit reports are scrutinised and the role of the accountant with respect to each challenge is reviewed and recommendations suggested which if implemented, may block the future recurrence of such weaknesses in the financial management systems in the public sector.

Introduction: All surgical procedures have the potential for infection and some of the main sources are contamination from airborne particles, theatre personnel and the theatre environment. There is strong evidence that the use of ultra-clean air flow systems in orthopedic operating theatres reduces the incidence of deep sepsis after surgery. In the developing world however, this is often an unrealistic solution. The aim of this study was to establish baseline levels of contamination in a working orthopedic theatre, at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, Blantyre, Malawi. To feedback results to the theatre team, promote infection prevention discussion and work with the team to implement workable and realistic goals to improve the intra-operative environment. Methodology: Samples were collected from theatre equipment available at the time of surgery, from theatre water and theatre air using passive air sampling techniques. Samples were immediately transferred to the Central Microbiology Laboratory for culture on basic culture media. Results: Bacterial contamination of theatre equipment, intra-operative theatre air and water was detected. Results were discussed with the theatre and infection prevention team who were receptive to feedback with regards to infection prevention strategies and keen to develop simple measures which could be put in place to change practice. Conclusions: In this setting, we suggest that implementing workable and realistic goals such as, establishing baseline rates of bacterial contamination and introduction of strict protocols for asepsis and theatre etiquette, may reduce bacterial contamination rates and subsequent intra-operative infection in the absence of expensive engineering solutions.

Jack Mapanje’s poetry is a true reflection of his society through the use of obscuring devices. These obscuring devices are necessary to ensure that the literary work reaches its intended audience in a totalitarian society. Overall, Jack Mapanje’s poetry exploits creatures from the world of nature—mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and insects—for close association with life experiences in various contexts and situations and with people he viewed with contempt and disgust and those he regarded with tenderness and compassion. He utilises them to conceptualize and construct a wide range of ideas that respond to questions of justice, identity and belonging. It all thus becomes part of ecocriticism which is defined by various authors as ‘the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment’. This eco-critical reading, the use of animal imagery in his poetry makes it stand apart and ahead of other resistance poetry and makes new statements about the relationships between animals, poetry and political resistance in African literature. Mapanje’s poetry is a direct response and a stance of resistance to social injustice, especially the debasement of culture, abuse of power, despotism, oppression and exploitation of the masses by the hegemonic regime of Dr. Hastings in Malawi that leads to his incarceration and final forced flight from his motherland. This paper attempts to showcase the nature of poetic expressions produced in a repressive society.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of languages and translation in the context of capacity building in NGOs in Kyrgyzstan. It argues that language barriers can impede local capacity building, while translation can help in overcoming some of the issues encountered. Design/methodology/approach The paper reports on what NGO workers have said on the role of languages and translation in their work in 34 semi-structured interviews conducted in Kyrgyzstan in January 2018. The discussion is structured around a theoretical understanding of capacity building at three levels: the organisational level, the individual level and a broader enabling environment. Findings First, the paper demonstrates that knowledge of English plays a key role in accessing international funding and information. Second, it describes the challenges that NGO workers encounter when translating information related to development into Russian and Kyrgyz. Third, it argues that donors do not overtly consider the important role of languages. Together, the findings suggest that ignoring the role of languages and translation can have a negative effect on project outcomes and power relationships. Practical implications Policy recommendations for international NGOs and donors drawn from this case study and from comparative case studies on Peru and Malawi have been published in Crack et al. (2018). Originality/value The paper argues that taking the role of languages and translation into account can result in a more in-depth understanding of aspects that may contribute to better local capacity building.

Doctors are scarce in Malawi and, therefore, a considerable amount of work is carried out by paramedical clinical officers (COs). Although their training is limited, they take care of the majority of patients in the country. The CO project started in the Southern region of Malawi in 2005 in order to improve the number of surgical and gynaecological operations and skills of COs. Nine district hospitals and eight Christian Health Organisation of Malawi (CHAM) hospitals were visited and all surgical registers from 2004 and 2007 were analysed and COs were interviewed. The interviewed COs felt at ease when performing operations; in 2004 they performed 61% and in 2007 87% of the surgical and gynaecological procedures itemised in the questionnaire. In 2004 a total of 18,524 operations were registered in the 17 hospitals in the Southern region of Malawi and there were 19,644 in 2007. Certified COs performed significantly more surgical than gynaecological operations. In 2004, 8.4% of their performed operations consisted of major surgical operations and 17.7% in 2007. A two-year postgraduate training in surgery is being developed for them but, in the meantime, it will be necessary to ensure a continuation of the CO project in the central and northern regions of Malawi.

SummaryThis study investigates current contraceptive use among Malawi couples. The data examined are from the 2001 Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP). The aim of the study is to explore whether contraceptive use among married couples is affected by the couple's concerns about HIV/AIDS and couple's age difference. Contraceptive use was found to be associated with the couple's HIV concern and family planning goals. There is no significant association between spousal age difference and contraceptive use. The findings are important for future work on the connection of marital concerns about HIV/AIDS with contraceptive behaviours, especially the use of condoms, and for informing HIV preventive strategies in marriage.

The study set out to investigate the factors influencing turnover among professional staff in some selected NGOs in Malawi. Using qualitative and participatory methods, the study used the levels of complexity model to analyse the factors leading to the problem of staff turnover in the selected NGOs. The main findings were that: · Professional staff turnover was 50% within a period of 18 months across all the NGOs interviewed. · For the professional staff, the main factors contributing to staff turnover were: ineffective organisational policies, systems and procedures; poor relationships and communication; and poor organisational values and culture. · In addressing the problem, NGO leaders tend to concentrate on efforts to improve salaries and other monetary benefits; and training opportunities. In order to more comprehensively address the problem of staff turnover among the professional staff however, NGO leaders must adopt a process or an Organisation Development (OD) approach.<br>Public Administration & Development Studies<br>M.A. (Development Studies)

Qualitative and quantitative research designs were employed to assess the influence of religion on gender equality and women empowerment in Mulanje district in Malawi. Qualitative data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires through interview with 18 key informants who were sampled by judgmental sampling and 4 FGDs with men and women belonging to different religions who were sampled by stratified random sampling. Quantitative data was collected using a self administered questionnaire to 130 participants sampled by stratified random sampling. Quantitative data was analyzed by using SPSS computer program version 16.0 in order to reach to a valid conclusion. The analysis of the data involved descriptive statistics. For qualitative data, themes were induced from the interview with key informants and FGD. Findings have revealed positive religious teachings and beliefs that have empowered women and promoted equality between men and women. Nevertheless, the study has also revealed that discriminatory religious teachings and attitudes are a reality in religious institutions and these have influenced not only the way women are treated in religious institutions but also the way women look at themselves. In light of the findings, recommendations have been made to the government of Malawi, religious institutions, religious leaders and CSOs to take appropriate actions to promote gender equality and women empowerment in Mulanje district.<br>Development Studies<br>M.A. (Development Studies)

This chapter brings together Hindu and Muslim thought on climate change in specific local contexts in India and Mali. The dialogue uncovers deep themes of economic power, environmental epistemology, and power politics that emerge from the intersection of two essays. The power to flourish depends on politics as much as religion, it seems. We will see the roles played by government officials, bureaucrats, and spiritual leaders as both India and Mali negotiate the relationship between citizens and the natural environment. Government and bio-spiritual voices, potentially at odds, would do better to work together. The chapter ends with provocative and practical suggestions toward localizing environmental protection that might be achieved via the collaboration of these two voices.

This chapter details how eight nations of Western Africa—Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea Bissau—transformed from government-controlled economies to market economies. The French West African states have adopted laws to open markets and protect competition, often at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the project has been set back by political and economic instability, the lack of human and financial capital, and regional preemption of domestic competition law. It is a striking fact that there is virtually no competition law enforcement in French West Africa and no merger control law. The obstacles may ultimately be overcome with focus, leadership, will, and a reset of the institutional environment to allow national law to work hand in hand with regional law.

Respiratory illness, fever, diarrhoea, and dermatitis are the four most frequent medical problems in the returned traveller. Unexplained fever is the most urgent of these because febrile conditions such as malaria, meningitis, and typhoid can all deteriorate rapidly and become life-threatening. Respiratory infections are also very common and are often viral in origin. A persistent cough or a doubtful CXR warrants further investigation. Diarrhoea that persists may well be helminthic in origin with giardiasis high on the list. In cases already treated with antibiotics one must consider C. difficile infection while the unmasking of inflammatory bowel disease or irritable bowel syndrome is probably more common than supposed. Dermatitis is often due to exacerbation of an existing condition, e.g. psoriasis or eczema. Tropical-related dermatitis is most frequently due to infected arthropod bites. CLM is the main parasitic cause. Exanthems and enanthems occur in a variety of systemic conditions ranging from acute HIV to dengue fever to coxsackie infection. Rashes are seldom diagnostic unless the cause is obvious, e.g. scabies or typhoid (rose spots). In all cases the practitioner should adhere to a strict protocol that involves a good history, careful physical examination, and routine screening and microscopy of blood, urine, and stool. Simple X-rays and ultrasound examination may also be considered. In no case should the practitioner hesitate to refer the patient to a specialist physician. Nowadays computer-assisted diagnosis is becoming more popular and more reliable. The Kabisa Travel System, developed in Antwerp, has been shown to perform equally well with travel physicians in diagnosing the cause of fever in those returned from a tropical environment. Kabisa is the Swaili word for ‘hand in the fire, I am absolutely certain’!

The human population of the earth took the whole of its existence until 1800 to build to 1 billion. By 2000 it had exceeded 6 billion, more than doubling in the twentieth century alone. In 1800, the time taken to navigate the globe by sailing ship was about a year. Today, no two cities served by commercial aircraft are more than a couple of days apart. Since this is less than most disease incubation times, infected people can travel undetected—a concern noted from the early days of commercial air travel. Within developed countries, the rate of individual circulation (in terms of average distances travelled) has increased 1,000-fold in the last 200 years. While the processes of population growth and geographical churn have been at work for the whole of human history, it is in the last two centuries that the momentum of change has gathered increasing pace. As described in Section 2.1, McMichael (2004) recognizes four separate stages. (i) Early human settlements from c.5,000 to c.10,000 years ago enabled enzootic pathogens to enter Homo sapiens populations. Some of these encounters led to the emergence of many of today’s textbook infections: influenza, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, smallpox, measles, malaria, and many others. (ii) Eurasian military and commercial contacts c.1,500 to c.3,000 years ago with swapping of dominant infections between the Mediterranean and Chinese civilizations. As described in Section 2.2, the plagues and pestilences of classical Greece and Rome date from this period. (iii) European exploration and imperialism from c.1500 with the transoceanic spread of often lethal infectious diseases. The impact on the Americas, on Australasia, and on remote island populations is well known; ships’ crews and passengers were the devastating vectors. (iv) The fourth great transition is today’s globalization, acting through demographic change and accelerating levels of contacts between the different parts of the world to facilitate disease emergence, re-emergence, and spatial transfer. Global warming, the destabilization of environments, the unparalleled movement of peoples rapidly across the globe through air transport, are all part of an evolving host–microbe relationship (cf. Section 1.3.1).

Gender equality and information and communication technology are important in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in policy, planning, and practice. The 2000 Millennium Declaration of the United Nations (UN) formed an international agreement among member states to work toward the reduction of poverty and its effects by 2015 through eight Millennium Development Goals: 1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 2. Achieve universal primary education 3. Promote gender equality and the empowerment of women 4. Reduce child and maternal mortality 5. Improve maternal health care 6. Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria, and other major diseases 7. Ensure environmental sustainability 8. Develop global partnership for development Progress toward gender equality and the empowerment of women is one goal that is important to achieving the others. Poverty, hunger, illiteracy, environmental threats, HIV and AIDS, and other health threats disproportionately affect the lives of women and their dependent children. Gender-sensitive ICT applications to education, health care, and local economies have helped communities progress toward the MDGs. ICT applications facilitate rural health-care workers’ access to medical expertise through phones and the Internet. Teachers expand learning resources through the Internet and satellite services, providing a greater knowledge base for learners. Small entrepreneurs with ICT access and training move their local business into world markets. ICT diffusion into world communication systems has been pervasive. Even some of the poorest economies in Africa show the fastest cell-phone growth, though Internet access and landline numbers are still low (International Telecommunications Union [ITU], 2003b). ICT access or a lack of it impacts participation, voice, and decision making in local, regional, and international communities. ICTs impact the systems that move or inhibit MDG progress. UN secretary general Kofi Annan explained the role of the MDGs in global affairs: Millennium Development Goals are too important to fail. For the international political system, they are the fulcrum on which development policy is based. For the billion-plus people living in extreme poverty, they represent the means to a productive life. For everyone on Earth, they are a linchpin to the quest for a more secure and peaceful world. (UN, 2005, p. 28) Annan also stressed the critical need for partnerships to facilitate technology training to enable information exchange and analysis (UN, 2005). ICT facilitates sharing lessons of success and failure, and progress evaluation of work in all the MDG target areas. Targets and indicators measuring progress were selected for all the MDGs. Gender equality and women’s empowerment are critical to the achievement of each other goal. Inadequate access to the basic human needs of clean water, food, education, health services, and environmental sustainability and the support of global partnership impacts great numbers of women. Therefore, the targets and indicators for Goal 3 address females in education, employment, and political participation. Progress toward the Goal 3 target to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015, will be measured by the following indicators. • Ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary, and tertiary education • Ratio of literate females to males who are 15- to 24-year-olds • Share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector • Proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments (World Bank, 2003) Education is positively related to improved maternal and infant health, economic empowerment, and political participation (United Nations Development Program [UNDP], 2004; World Bank, 2003). Education systems in developing countries are beginning to offer or seek ways to provide ICT training as a basic skill and knowledge base. Proactive policy for gender equality in ICT access has not always accompanied the unprecedented ICT growth trend. Many civil-society representatives to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) argue for ICT access to be considered a basic human right (Girard &amp; Ó Soichrú, 2004; UN, 1948). ICT capability is considered a basic skill for education curriculum at tertiary, secondary, and even primary levels in developed regions. In developing regions, ICT access and capability are more limited but are still tightly woven into economic communication systems. ICTs minimize time and geography barriers. Two thirds of the world’s poor and illiterate are women (World Bank, 2003). Infant and maternal health are in chronic crisis for poor women. Where poverty is highest, HIV and AIDS are the largest and fastest growing health threat. Ninety-five percent of people living with HIV and AIDS are in developing countries, partly because of poor dissemination of information and medical treatment. Women are more vulnerable to infection than men. Culturally reinforced sexual practices have led to higher rates of HIV infection for women. Gender equality and the empowerment of women, starting with education, can help fight the spread of HIV, AIDS, and other major diseases. ICT can enhance health education through schools (World Bank). Some ICT developers, practitioners, and distributors have identified ways to incorporate gender inclusiveness into their policies and practice for problem-solving ICT applications toward each MDG target area. Yet ICT research, development, education, training, applications, and businesses remain male-dominated fields, with only the lesser skilled and salaried ICT labor force approaching gender equality. Successful integration of gender equality and ICT development policy has contributed to MDG progress through several projects in the developing regions. Notable examples are the South-African-based SchoolNet Africa and Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank Village Pay Phone. Both projects benefit from international public-private partnerships. These and similar models suggest the value and importance of linking gender equality and empowerment with global partnership for development, particularly in ICT. This article reports on developing efforts to coordinate the achievement of the MDGs with policy, plans, and practice for gender equality beyond the universal educational target, and with the expansion of ICT access and participation for women and men. The article examines the background and trends of MDG 3, to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, with particular consideration of MDG 8, to develop global partnership for development, in ICT access and participation.

&lt;p&gt;The performance of the finite element (FE) model updating technique is validated in this work via the evaluation of the vibration serviceability limit state of a real stadium grandstand. This type of structures can suffer from vibration phenomena due to the dynamic action of spectators. As benchmark structure, grandstand of the University of Malaga stadium is considered. To simulate the action of the spectators, body units were numerically implemented. A preliminary FE model of the grandstand was built and then the updating process was conducted based on the modal parameters experimentally identified. The maximum deck acceleration given for the two different FE models, preliminary and updated, is compared. As result, a relative difference around 19% is obtained. It can be concluded that the updated FE model represents more accurately the structural response of the grandstand.&lt;/p&gt;

Sequential decision-making under cost-sensitive tasks is prohibitively daunting, especially for the problem that has a significant impact on people's daily lives, such as malaria control, treatment recommendation. The main challenge faced by policymakers is to learn a policy from scratch by interacting with a complex environment in a few trials. This work introduces a practical, data-efficient policy learning method, named Variance-Bonus Monte Carlo Tree Search~(VB-MCTS), which can copy with very little data and facilitate learning from scratch in only a few trials. Specifically, the solution is a model-based reinforcement learning method. To avoid model bias, we apply Gaussian Process~(GP) regression to estimate the transitions explicitly. With the GP world model, we propose a variance-bonus reward to measure the uncertainty about the world. Adding the reward to the planning with MCTS can result in more efficient and effective exploration. Furthermore, the derived polynomial sample complexity indicates that VB-MCTS is sample efficient. Finally, outstanding performance on a competitive world-level RL competition and extensive experimental results verify its advantage over the state-of-the-art on the challenging malaria control task.

On a global basis, trace-metal pollution is one of the most pervasive environmental problems. It is particularly difficult to prevent or clean up because the metals are toxic in their elemental form and cannot be decomposed. Bioremediation has been shown to be a powerful system for heavy metal pollution clean up and prevention. In this work, we characterized the cadmium (Cd)-resistant bacteria isolated from rice field soil downstream from zinc (Zn) mineralized area which the owners were contaminated at high level of cadmium content in their blood (&amp;gt;10 μgCd/g creatinine). We found that all 24 isolated bacteria tolerated toxic Cd concentrations (2,500 μM). In order to determine whether the Cd toxicity affected the growth of isolated bacteria, we grew the isolated bacterial cells in the absence and presence of toxic concentrations of CdCl2 (500 μM). In the absence of Cd, all isolated bacterial cells grew slightly better than in the presence of toxic concentrations of Cd. In addition, the Cd binding capacity of all isolated bacteria were very high, ranging from 6.38 to 9.38 log[Cd(atom)]/cell when grown in the presence of 500 μM CdCl2. Furthermore, the stability of Cd-bacteria complex of all isolated bacteria was affected by 1mM EDTA. When grown in the presence of 500 μM CdCl2, Cd-resistant isolates S2500-6, -8, -9, -15, -17, -18, -19, and -22 increasingly produced proteins containing cysteine (SH-group) (from 1.3 to 2.2 times) as well as 11 isolates of Cd-resistant bacteria, including S2500-1, -2, -3, -5, -6, -8, -9, -11, -16, -20, and -21, increasingly produced inorganic sulfide (1.5 to 4.7 times). Furthermore, the Sulfur K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy studies indicated that Cd-resistant isolated S2500-3 precipitated amounts of cadmium sulfide (CdS), when grown in the presence of 500 μM CdCl2. The results suggested that these Cd-resistant bacteria have potential ability to precipitate a toxic soluble CdCl2 as nontoxic insoluble CdS. Interestingly, Cd-resistant bacteria isolated S2500-3, -8, -9,and -20 increased cadmium tolerance of Thai jasmine rice (Kao Hom Mali 105) when grown in the presence of 200 μM CdCl2. These 4 isolates also decreased cadmium concentration accumulation in Kao Hom Mali 105 plant at 61, 9, 6, and 17%, respectively when grown in the presence of 200 μM CdCl2. They were identified by 16S rDNA sequence analysis and classified as Cupriavidus taiwanensis (isolate S2500-3) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (isolates S2500-8, -9, and -20).

The Camisea’s Pipeline Transportation System (PTS) in Peru, owned by Transportadora de Gas del Perú (TgP) and operated by Compañía Operadora de Gas del Amazonas (COGA), stars in the Amazon rainforest, crosses the Andes Mountain (4850masl) and descends finally towards the coast of the Pacific. The PTS has more than 10 years of operation and it has two pipelines: one transports Natural Gas (NG) and the other Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) pipelines. The NG pipeline has a length of 864km including a Loop pipeline of 135km. The NGL pipeline has a length of 557km. Because of particular physiographic conditions of each geographic sector that cross the right-of-way (ROW), the integrity of the PTS acquires a level of significant susceptibility to the occurrence of geohazard, which are the product of natural erosive processes and mass movements. In the coast sector, one of the most representative processes of geotechnical instability is the soil or debris flow (mass movements of soils). The occurrence of this type of flow has a greater incidence in the torrential creek, which generate transport of large volumes of sediments during rainy seasons. The flow has destructive effects and therefore, it is necessary to analyze the geomorphological, geological and hydrological aspects of the main creek and rivers that crosses the ROW with the objective of maintaining the integrity of the pipelines. In Peru, the flows are associated and known as Huayco or Huaico. As an additional component, it is highlight that the Peruvian coast is located within the area of interaction between the South American Continental Plate and the Nazca Plate, where there is evidence of seismic activity with different magnitude that influence on the occurrence of geo-dynamic processes with certain periods of frequency that could change the terrane’s morphology. The current article describes technical aspects of identification, intervention, monitoring, and geotechnical control in sub-fluvial crossings with levels of potential damage to the geohazard defined as huayco in the integrity management program of PTS. This activity include 63 main sub-fluvial crosses, approximately 30% are of the seasonal flow regime, located in the coast zone; at the same time, these are tributary to main rivers of constant flow as is the case of the Pisco, Cañete and Mala rivers. In this paper, it is place a special emphasis on the fourth crossing of the Huáncano creek, because it is a place of potential impact in the occurrence of soil flows. Within the annual geotechnical maintenance of the sub-fluvial crosses, in the part of the Peruvian coast, for the operation of the PTS of TgP, bed and banks protection some works are implemented, such as: Check dams, re-channeling, levees and stone riprap (Stone armour). Likewise, a program of evaluation and technical inspection is develop: it includes the analysis of the expected levels of undermining and performance condition of the existing works, which allow defining the geotechnical intervention in a term according to the identified risk level. All in all framed within a process of permanent geotechnical monitoring of the right of way. Finally, it is highlighted that to date the application of the process described above has been continued, which has facilitated the development and continuous assessment of the risk condition by huaycos in the PTS of TgP. This program has maintained an operation with an acceptable level of risk in the areas of interest and avoiding problems and consequences of great impact to communities, the environment and the operation of the system.