Tanzania: Four Years - Magufuli Has Walked the Talk

By Bernard Lugongo

PRESIDENT Magufuli has worked on at least 20 key issues that he raised in his speech when ...

inaugurating the Parliament four years ago, the 'Daily News' has learnt.

In his speech, the President pointed out over 25 matters, promising that his Fifth Phase Government would be dealing with to drive the country to middle economy status and improve lives of the people.

The president said that those Tanzanians during campaign rallies for the 2015 General Election. As he marks his fourth year in power, the 'Daily News' revisited his speech delivered on November 20, 2015, and established that the President implemented most of the pledges, with few others still under implementation.

The speech, considered as his roadmap during his five-year term of leadership, mentioned the cankerworm of corruption as the worst scourge which the electorate wanted to be fought in the society.

The president promised to deal with this social evil among public officials and establish a special court to handle corruption cases.

The Head of State walked the talk after several corrupt officials faced the music. A number of officials were prosecuted and others lost jobs over corruption.

This enabled the reinstallation of discipline in the public offices. The president said local governments were losing a lot of money due to failure to effectively collect revenues and embezzlement of public funds.

When he came to power, Dr Magufuli decided to transfer the responsibility of revenue collection in the regional and local governments to the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), which has advanced means of collecting revenues on behalf of the local governments, especially the property tax.

On land issue, his speech raised concern over conflicts pitting farmers and pastoralists in different parts of the country and a rampant trend whereby people monopolised land without developing it.

In different occasions, the President annulled ownership of undeveloped land and ordered redistribution to villagers for farming activities.

The President has also worked to find remedy to chronic theft and bureaucracy at the Dar es Salaam Port.

He personally made surprise visits at the port after getting information over irregularities and uncovered several shortfalls, including imported goods evading taxation.

The Parliament also heard about inadequate water, a challenge which the President pledged to increase water availability during his tenure.

In his four years of the presidency, water availability in rural areas has increased from 46 per cent to 65 per cent and in urban areas the figure went up to over 80 per cent from 65 per cent.

He further vowed to strengthen the TRA capacity in collecting taxes along with fighting bureaucracy, corruption and loss of revenues.

Upon his pledge, several managerial changes were made to the TRA during this time to ensure efficiency of the taxman. Some top officials who allegedly engaged in corruption faced legal actions.

The measures enabled the authority to raise annual revenues collections.

Massive reforms made at the authority has helped to increase monthly collection from 800bn/- to more than 1.4tril/- In bringing health services to the people, the government has built about 360 health centres so far, with a target to set up a health centre at each ward countrywide.

This is implementation of his promise after realising that people were struggling to access health services because the facilities were located far from their areas.

The presence of few health facilities caused congestion at the centres. In education, the President had told the Parliament over existing lots of financial contributions from parents to schools.

Dr Magufuli resorted to implementing the free-education policy which enables students enjoy free education up to secondary level.

He further noted with concern over the outmoded railway infrastructures and poor performance of the state-owned airline, Air Tanzania Company Limited (ATCL).

Four years of his leadership saw a revamp of the railway infrastructures with ongoing construction project to upgrade the railway to Standard Gauge.

With his intent to revive the ATCL, Dr Magufuli acted on his speech, with the purchase of new seven planes.

The President went on making things a reality on his pledge to construct road infrastructures, connecting regions and districts.

In Dar es Salaam, Tazara flyover has been completed and launched several roads in the regions to ease transportation.

In taking the country to middle economy status, President Magufuli focused on encouraging investment in industries, with thousands of new industries established countrywide.