Tanzania: JPM's Four Promises to Public Sector Employees

 

President John Magufuli.  Photo: The Citizen

By Syriacus Buguzi

Dar es Salaam — President John Magufuli yesterday promised to employ 52,000 new workers in various departments in government this year as he outlined his four major pledges to public sector employees during the International Workers' Day celebrations.

Dr Magufuli said the government would soon embark on a process to ensure job promotions and salary increments to the workers, after after failing to do so last year pending the completion of the process to strike out "ghost" workers.

The government has until recently said that there were over 19,706 ghost workers who were being paid billions of shillings and this hampered the efforts to put genuine workers on payroll. A recent report also showed that there were over 10,000 other civil servants holding fake certificates.

Ahead of yesterday's Wokers' Day Celebrations, President Magufuli sacked the over 9,000 fake certificate holders. He announced the sacking in Dodoma on Friday. He said this was one step towards creating employment opportunities in the government for workers who were still jobless.

Adding on his major pledges, President Magufuli promised to revamp the pension schemes and streamline the payment retirement benefits to workers.

The head of state said that the government is in the final stages of the process to form a scheme, guided by the law, which would help workers claim for unemployment benefits when they lose their job contacts.

"When this law is passed by the parliament, I will sign it on the very day it arrives in my office," emphasized the President amid applause from the public--mostly Moshi residents who gathered at Moshi Co-operative University (MoCU) grounds on Workers' Day Celebrations.

The president noted that the unemployment benefits system which he has promised, would replace the earlier Social Security Act; where members of Social security and pension funds used to withdraw and receive their financial benefits from pension fund institutions, before attaining retirement age.

He also revealed that a Ministerial Secular was being prepared by the government on how to unify the pension and social security funds and when the secular is completed, it would give way for the formation of a law to reduce the number of pension funds from the current known seven to two.

"By creating two pension funds, it will make it easy to create a unified payment formula for all beneficiaries. This has been a major outcry of workers under their union. I am taking this forward and I promise to work on it," said Dr Magufuli.

He called on employers across the country to ensure that they deliver their pension contributions to the fund institutions on time, but he admitted that the government was one of the institutions lagging behind in delivering the payments.

"Before we[the government] start blaming others, it's high time we cleaned our house first. That's why I am making this solemn promise to show an example to all other employers," he said.

"There have been complaints about delayed payment of retirement benefits. As you may know, the government is also partly to blame for this delay. We[the government] have confessed and I promise to work on it," he said.

He recalled that by the time he got in office, the government had not delivered about Sh1.5trillion in payment for retirement benefits. The president said that since 2010, a large portion of the retirement funds had not been delivered to the pension institutions.

"I want to let you know that as we speak now, I have already delivered Sh1.23trillion. I promise to finish the remaining amount sooner than later," promised Dr Magufuli amid cheers.

He rallied for support from the workers to his government in ensuring that that the institutions were working efficiently to serve the public as he defended the 15 per cent pay cut from beneficiaries of the Higher Learning Education Students' Loans Board (HESLB).

According to Dr Magufuli, out of the Sh427billion that must be paid to HESLB, only Sh181.4billion has been paid by the loan beneficiaries. He warmed that failure to pay the loans, the HRSLB would be crippled and this would deny loans to several new students.

"Those who benefitted from the loans must pay so that the governments gets funds to pay for other students who are getting enrolled," he said.

Last year, the government passed a law in parliament under the Miscellaneous Amendments to raise the pay cut from 8 to 15 percent for all beneficiaries of the HESLB since last year.

There has been a clamour from workers for the government to reverse its decision but their appeals appear not to hold water as the president appeared to hit "the last nail on the coffin" of the debate of whether to stop the 15 percent increase or not.

He strongly defended the pay cut saying, "It doesn't matter when you took the loan. There are those who took loans as far back as 2000 and so on. They were also complaining that this 15 percent does not concern them. The issue at hand is that you owe the loans board . Pay it."

"It would have been better if you pay the whole loan now. Even if you can afford 50 percent. Pay it so that you remain free from the loan," he said.