Tanzania ya Sasa
By TONY ZAKARIA, 24th September 2011
YOU know what is wrong with Tanzania? There are people who avoid performing a decent day's work. Instead they want maximum pay for minimum effort. Many employed Tanzanians want higher salaries without assurance of quality of goods and services and higher productivity.
Some casual laborers are forever finding ways to cheat their employers. If you are building a house, masons and laborers can hike the cost of labor while stealing your building materials from your stock in broad daylight.
Erecting a building or constructing roads is unnecessarily expensive undertaking in Tanzania. Everyone involved in the supply chain wants to take something off the top. To maximize profits, a contractor can use cheaper but substandard materials or shamelessly utilise less cement in the concrete or smaller gauge iron bars. How safe are our buildings? How good are our roads?
If you send artisans to buy building materials they will inflate the prices or charge you for something they did not buy even though they listed it. Have you tried buying materials on your own? Shopkeepers can smell you are loaded with money from a mile away. They will quote you prices that are 150% higher than they charge your `fund's' or artisans.
Masons, contractors and shop owners know each other very well like a good shepherd knows his sheep. A shopkeeper knows which buyers are like Merino sheep to be sheared for best wool.
So if you are a builder, be on the lookout. Everybody wants to screw you if you will pardon my French. What happened to honesty in business and employment?
Some teachers no longer teach to their best yet they want higher salaries. This is also corruption. Even in private schools, the laissezfaire attitude of teachers is visible. Teachers give so much homework to students that parents and guardians have to help.
Why? Teachers have little time to prepare well so that students understand the lessons. Such teachers teach less and focus more of their energy on lucrative after-hours tuition.
Doctors, nurses and other hospital staff have their fair share of corruption.
The ''madudu'' that happens in hospitals requires a separate article to just scratch the surface of inefficiency and level of corrupt practices. Suffice to say in surveys of public perception on government services, the health sector, the judiciary and the police force repeatedly feature as the most corrupt sectors in Tanzania.
Peasant farmers in coastal and least wealthy provinces like Dodoma, Singida and Kigoma are quite happy to cultivate just half an acre of land for food and cash crops despite having abundant land around their villages. This is why Tanzania is yet to become food-sufficient 50 years after independence.
Some peasant farmers rich in complaints but poor in thinking and in farming practices use the little food they harvest to celebrate during traditional dances. In times of food shortages they run to government for help. When local or foreign investors employ capital and brains to grow food and other crops on the land which no villager has ever grown anything on it for the last century, it becomes a big issue.
Villagers demand eviction of the investor.
In the good old days government of Tanzania had purchasing officers and government stores. Every item used in government offices had GOT on it so you could not take it home and pretend you bought as a present for the missus or hubby.
Even stationery's for official use be it folders, writing pads, notebooks, pens and inks were engraved with government markings. Bought in bulk from quality suppliers they were stored and requisitioned under strict supervision. So were plates and cups in government residential houses, trains and ships.
Government supplies were quality stuff and lasted forever, not like the cheap stuff taken off backstreet shelves of shopkeepers of questionable honesty and integrity. These days everything used in government offices and residences is bought by tender. Tenders are fat cows for slaughter. Everybody who has teeth wants a chunk of the meat.
The contractor wants something and the committee that awards the tender wants something beyond sitting allowances. Even the shopkeeper also wants a piece of the juicy meat. Corruption in public tenders merits a separate article. Suffice to say that corrupt practices in the public procurement are a time bomb waiting to explode.
Tanzania is one of the least developed and highly indebted countries in the world. However, if someone was to judge the wealth of Dar es Salaam city strictly by the type of private vehicles on the road, Dar can easily be compared to San Diego or Los Angeles of California where some of the wealthiest Americans live.
How much business turnover is there in Tanzania to generate so much wealth that citizens can afford such conspicuous consumption? The time when the best cars were owned by expatriates disappeared with the reign of Mwalimu Nyerere.
These days even Mwanza has its fair share of Mercedes, Hummers, Lexus, Rovers and outrageous stretch limousines. I have seen the kind of luxury cars Arusha residents own as I drove from Ngarenaro to Njiro recently. Is all that wealth obtained legally or is there part of it that is a result of clever book-keeping of government accounts?
If Tanzania was governed by martial law requiring anyone linked to corrupt practices to be executed by firing squad, who will remain standing? Can leaders of churches, mosques and other houses of worship refuse offerings of tainted money?
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Source: Daily News online available on url http://www.dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=23956
