EVERYWHERE I go the cry is: “There is no money. President Magufuli’s policy has driven money away.” Slowly, people are beginning to admit that the plenty of cash that used to float around was illegal money, so to speak because if it were, it would be overflowing now.Why has it disappeared then? It was money embezzled from the government. It was taxes owed to the state. The good work Dr Magufuli has so far done has impressed scores and scores. Unnecessary foreign trips have been banned.In these trips government officials who often flew abroad as if they were going on a tourist visit to the Serengeti National Park, got a lot of money by way of allowances. God knows how else they made cash on the trips or what more their gains were.
Nevertheless, financial advantages must have been many and big. Several people would have thought that after President Magufuli reduced the trips substantially, people and government officials particularly, would support the action.
Indeed, it has been the converse. Earlier this week, an MP from Zanzibar raised the question of foreign trips in the House. He praised ex-President Jakaya Kikwete for his charity of taking with him a number of Zanzibar government officials during his reign whenever he travelled abroad.
I was mightily shocked. How could a legislator, an eminent personality in the country who should be striving to devise a means to reduce government’s expenditure clamour for an overseas travel heavily loaded with civil servants most of whom are irrelevant to the trip?
The implication is loud. There are today many government officials and other eminent persons who used to be included in presidential foreign travels, but will in the fifthphase government miss the trip with a lot of pain.
Apparently, overseas trips had also both financial and material gains for the civil servants who made them. To such people a good president is one who travels a lot overseas and takes along with him or her many people just for camaraderie. Tanzania is a free market economy but going on such foreign travels is a chance to see and buy more at a price cheaper than at home.
There are no taxes on commodities bought overseas because their owners return home as V.I.Ps. Camaraderie was built! Given the history of the nation such trips mostly made as shopping sprees were the status quo in government previous to Dr Magufuli’s arrival and many are unwilling to change. What the Zanzibari legislator said merely described the extent of the government’s frugality on trips abroad.
There have been many methods through which people fleeced the government of millions in days and billions in months. It is, however, wrong to think President Magufuli will bring a lasting change while the people – at least many of them – are unwilling to change.
Significant therefore, should be people’s disinclination to demand more from the government unless they, or we ourselves for that matter, are willing to change. The change ought not be imposed, change from above, but come from within - spontaneous change.
The President has been in power for about six months today, but the change he has brought is remarkable, profound. Most financial loopholes have since then been plugged, sending the likes of Melchiel Bethuel running in circles for what they call financial drought.
“I used to get 60,000/- to 90,000/- in a day,” says Bethuel, a bodaboda boy who operates along Mandela Highway in the area of Tabata in Dar city. Today, says Bethuel, he gets only 10 – 15, 000/-. “You are lucky if you get 20,000/-,” he adds.
I wanted to know who mostly Bethuel’s customers were. He said they were workers – employees who earned monthly salaries. “They are so stingy now with their money and can only pay 4,000/- for a distance they readily paid 10,000/-, for previously,” he says.
That tells a lot at a glance. Employees earned much more than their fair share of the monthly pay and could therefore dish money left, right and centre. By plugging financial loophole, President Magufuli has caused some panic.
Bethuel does not know what to do, but hopes all will be well sooner or later. Indeed there are many people who hope things will ‘be back to normal’. What they call normal is indeed ‘dishonesty’. Moreover, what they mean is that President Magufuli’s ‘Hapa kazi tu’ policy is but a nine wonder day.
If things, so to speak, do not revert to ‘normal’ in this first term, people will have a free ride in the second term. “People are still studying him,” says a youth who wished to remain anonymous.
“In the second term, people will be stealing so easily because they will have understood how to rob his government of even bigger sums than they stole during Kikwete’s regime.
Of course President Magufuli’s supporters talk and want more change – change they can see and feel. The change they mean is a different attitude towards work. People must develop industry.
Indolence, a prevalent and favourite disposition towards work until recently by many, should be a thing of the past. On Thursday this week President Magufuli placed the foundation stone of a library for the University of Dar es Salaam.
The library will be the biggest in Africa. Quite a national feat, isn’t it? But the library will mean nothing without industry. If students are not inclined to working hard, the sheer size of the library and its status on the continent won’t bring progress to the people.
It will be a white elephant. Rumours have it that Tanzanians don’t like to read. Maybe some don’t, but that disposition must change!
At the same ceremony the President expressed furore at the discovery that one college, in the country - St Joseph – had admitted unqualified undergraduates.
“It admitted Form IV students who had scored grade IV or less, people qualified to go for a certificate course,” the President denounced.
Such a strong spirit to aspire for further education, but with a religious disinclination for reading hard, augurs ill for the planned super library. People must change for real development to come.
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