- To hire 52,436 new civil servants
THE government will employ at least 52,436 new workers in the 2017/2018 fiscal year, to address critical shortages in various public sectors, the National Assembly was told here on Thursday.
Minister of State in the President’s
Office- Public Service and Good Governance, Ms Angellah Kairuki said
this while winding up her ministry’s budget estimates for 2017/2018,
that the new workers will be employed after undergoing thorough
verification. On Thursday, the House endorsed the ministry’s 821bn/-
budget for the next financial year.
“Verification will continue in order to
avoid employing workers with no required qualifications. We will also
continue to provide employment in the public sectors after conducting
work load analysis, as well as considering professionalism, integrity
and competence among other key factors,” she noted.
Ms Kairuki spoke of a success story of
flushing out ‘ghost’ workers. She said the government took a ‘huge’ step
in the fight against costly corruption by ridding the payroll of 19,708
fraudulent wages paid to employees who did not exist.
She added, “We have made a great start
to this exercise that has seen the government payroll getting rid of
some 19,708 false employees.” This success story comes just over 18
months into President John Magufuli’s term, when the exercise started,
according to Ms Kairuki, the country managed to make a huge savings of
19.8bn/- that was to be paid to ghost workers monthly.
She said that getting rid of false
workers has also paved the way for employment of new personnel in public
sectors. In addition to this, Minister Kairuki also revealed that at
least 1,595 government officials who championed a “syndicate of ghost
workers” have been implicated and will be charged according to the laws.
The issue refers to people creating aliases or false names to claim payments from public service departments.
Eradicating the problem of ghost workers
and cleaning up the payroll has been one of the key features of the
Magufuli presidency, so far, in fulfilling his campaign promise to
fundamentally change the country.
She said that the government approved employment permits for 9,721 new employees from July, last year, to March, this year.
A total of 3,174 vacancies were reserved
for Police Force, 1,000 for Prisons Department, 852 for Fire Brigade
and Rescue Services and 297 for Immigration Department.
During the same period, Ms Kairuki said,
her ministry had allocated at least 50 vacancies for health experts,
who have been deployed at Mloganzila Hospital in Dar es Salaam.
She further said that 4,129 permits were
approved for employment of science and mathematics teachers
countrywide, as well as 219 permits to employ laboratory technicians. Ms
Kairuki further told the august House that verification of unpaid
salaries to civil servants amounting to 32.9bn/- was
conducted and already, their demands
have been channelled into the ministry’s data system ready for payment.
She further said that demands of unpaid salaries to at least 12,973
civil service workers, which amount to 21.6bn/- were still being
verified and those approved will be paid.
Ms Kairuki also promised that the
government will continue to provide training to civil servants, to
expose them to technological advancement and other new trends around the
world. She said that in 2015/2016 some 395 civil servants attended
short training abroad and 654 were trained during this financial year.
She also rebuked claims directed to the
government especially by the opposition camp that it was not exercising
good governance and hence fails to attract support from the
international community.
“It is appalling to hear such claims
from MPs, in fact our Finance Minister is always busy signing deals with
donors and our partners to support various development projects. Just
recently, we signed 170 million US dollar deal with DFID to support
TASAF programmes,” she enlightened MPs.
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