- To hire 52,436 new civil servants
THE government will employ at least 52,436 new workers in the 2017/2018 fiscal year, to address critical shortages in various public sectors, the National Assembly was told here on Thursday
Minister of State in the President’s Office- Public Service and Good Governance, Ms Angellah Kairuki said this while winding up her ministry’s budget estimates for 2017/2018, that the new workers will be employed after undergoing thorough verification. On Thursday, the House endorsed the ministry’s 821bn/- budget for the next financial year.
“Verification will continue in order to avoid employing workers with no required qualifications. We will also continue to provide employment in the public sectors after conducting work load analysis, as well as considering professionalism, integrity and competence among other key factors,” she noted.
Ms Kairuki spoke of a success story of flushing out ‘ghost’ workers. She said the government took a ‘huge’ step in the fight against costly corruption by ridding the payroll of 19,708 fraudulent wages paid to employees who did not exist.
She added, “We have made a great start to this exercise that has seen the government payroll getting rid of some 19,708 false employees.” This success story comes just over 18 months into President John Magufuli’s term, when the exercise started, according to Ms Kairuki, the country managed to make a huge savings of 19.8bn/- that was to be paid to ghost workers monthly.
She said that getting rid of false workers has also paved the way for employment of new personnel in public sectors. In addition to this, Minister Kairuki also revealed that at least 1,595 government officials who championed a “syndicate of ghost workers” have been implicated and will be charged according to the laws.
The issue refers to people creating aliases or false names to claim payments from public service departments.
Eradicating the problem of ghost workers and cleaning up the payroll has been one of the key features of the Magufuli presidency, so far, in fulfilling his campaign promise to fundamentally change the country.
She said that the government approved employment permits for 9,721 new employees from July, last year, to March, this year.
A total of 3,174 vacancies were reserved for Police Force, 1,000 for Prisons Department, 852 for Fire Brigade and Rescue Services and 297 for Immigration Department.
During the same period, Ms Kairuki said, her ministry had allocated at least 50 vacancies for health experts, who have been deployed at Mloganzila Hospital in Dar es Salaam.
She further said that 4,129 permits were approved for employment of science and mathematics teachers countrywide, as well as 219 permits to employ laboratory technicians. Ms Kairuki further told the august House that verification of unpaid salaries to civil servants amounting to 32.9bn/- was
conducted and already, their demands have been channelled into the ministry’s data system ready for payment. She further said that demands of unpaid salaries to at least 12,973 civil service workers, which amount to 21.6bn/- were still being verified and those approved will be paid.
Ms Kairuki also promised that the government will continue to provide training to civil servants, to expose them to technological advancement and other new trends around the world. She said that in 2015/2016 some 395 civil servants attended short training abroad and 654 were trained during this financial year.
She also rebuked claims directed to the government especially by the opposition camp that it was not exercising good governance and hence fails to attract support from the international community.
“It is appalling to hear such claims from MPs, in fact our Finance Minister is always busy signing deals with donors and our partners to support various development projects. Just recently, we signed 170 million US dollar deal with DFID to support TASAF programmes,” she enlightened MPs.
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