President John Magufuli has ordered newly-appointed regional commissioners to clear all ghost workers in local government authorities from the civil service payroll as part of a wider crackdown on public salary fraud.
Magufuli also instructed the RCs after swearing them in at State
House yesterday in Dar es Salaam to clamp down on crime, saying there
was no reason for Tanzanians to continue to suffer from poverty and
insecurity.
The president said the country’s youth population can’t be allowed
to remain idle, and ordered RCs to find ways of putting young Tanzanians
to work “even by force.”
“I am giving you 15 days to fix this problem,” Magufuli told
regional commissioners in his ultimatum to them to crack down on fake
workers in municipal councils.
Although the official government payroll lists a total of 556,418
civil servants, it is a badly-kept secret that a considerable percentage
of them are actually ghost workers receiving unverified salaries from
the state.
The payroll itself amounts to a whopping 573.7 billion/- per month, which the president said was unacceptable.
He further disclosed that a sample audit of local government
authorities has confirmed the presence of 202 ghost workers in Dodoma
and Singida regions alone.
District executive directors found to have ghost workers on their
payrolls should henceforth be sacked and taken to court, Magufuli said.
A ghost employee is someone recorded on an organizational payroll
system, but who doesn’t work for that organization. The ghost can be a
real person who has been knowingly or unknowingly placed on the payroll,
or a fictitious person invented by the people running the payroll
system.
Only last week, President Magufuli ordered the Bank of Tanzania
(BoT) to conduct a staff audit of its currently 1,391-strong workforce
and delete redundant or ghost employees.
Speaking to 25 new RCs and the newly-appointed chief executives of
the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) and Prevention and Combating of
Corruption Bureau (PCCB) at their swearing-in ceremony at State House
yesterday, he said:
“We should not be afraid to make decisions...its better to make the
decisions - even if they are wrong - and rectify them in future if
necessary.”
“The crime rate in our regions is unacceptable. There is no crime
in Rwanda, why is this only a problem in Tanzania?” he told the RCs, who
by virtue of their positions are also chairpersons of their regional
defence and security committees.
Magufuli also warned the regional bosses that they will be held
accountable if they fail to deliver on key responsibilities like
ensuring their regions don’t face food shortages.
He told them to also make sure they engage Tanzania’s youths in
productive work, including farming, instead of allowing them to remain
idle.
“If our youths are so much used to just sitting around and playing
pool all day, it is better to use force if necessary to put them in
camps where they can do even farming activities,” the president said,
adding: “When the youths leave the camps, they will at least have learnt
something useful.”
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