Opinion
Analysis
It has been revealed that TANROADS is tuff on
overloading on our country’s roads, a practice which should be admired and
welcomed as well as followed by other institutions and companies in the country.
It came as something of a surprise that an institution is actually doing what it
is supposed to do. Normally reports and news emerge when rules and regulations
are not followed; however, in this case the opposite has happened.
Overloading is certainly one of the most serious problems contributing to a
deteriorated condition of the roads, thus tackling the problem is imperative.
It seems as if the level of effort to combat the problem is present at many
stages, which adds to the seriousness with which TANROADS have approached the
problem. There is one thing to condemn and condone, issuing stern warnings and
so on; and another to actually follow those principles in practice.
What now is needed is a collaborating response for other stakeholders in the
transport sector. Firms carrying heavy loads on the roads should comply with the
standard set by TANROADS and stay within the weight limits and not overload. One
should hope that because of the severe penalties given to offenders, overloading
should soon be something of the past.
If, in the near future, it will be proved that indeed the phenomenon of
overloading is decreasing, TANROADS in collaboration with the government and
other institutions and departments concerned should make their outmost in trying
to reduce the allowed cargo weights on our country’s rods.
Compared to other countries in the world, Tanzania is still very lenient to
transporters and allows trucks and lorries to carry much more than what is
allowed elsewhere. However, reducing the weight limits is not an easy task, but
needs the support and endorsement from neighbouring countries as well as from
countries overseas.
Why should our country’s roads carry a substantially heavier burden than
countries in Europe for example? It is widely known that overloading damages the
roads severely. If outsiders are serious in trying to help our country back on
its feet, it should reveal us of the financial difficulties of constantly having
to repair our roads. Hence we need the support from abroad in pressurising the
government to reduce the weight limits.
What TANROADS have embarked upon is commendable, let’s hope it will be
successful and sets the stage for future seriousness by ministries, public and
private companies.
Tanzanian cricket has come a
long way
Of all the popular sports in Tanzania that need special accolades and praises,
cricket must take that honour.
In just a period of four years, cricket has made a remarkable achievement. A
women cricket team has been introduced which eventually won the continental
title and added a dimension to the skyrocket success of the Tanzanian cricket
body.
The Deputy Minister for Labour, Youth Development and Sports, Mudhihir M.
Mudhihir commenting the body said it had achieved its gigantic programme sooner
than expected.
Every sports lover in Tanzania witnessed with a nod of approval how the Tanzania
Cricket Association(TCA) initiated virtually unknown boys and girls into the
sport.
One of the internationally applauded moves was their brave decision to send a
development side to the World Cup Qualifying tournament. The team eventually won
more than just accolades and praises when they bruised the home team who ended
the event with just two wins and three losses.
TCA initiated and organized the Africa Women’s Cricket tournament that was held
from 7th to 12th April 2004 in Dar es Salaam. The Vice President of the
International Women’s Cricket Council Betty Timer flew all the way from the
Netherlands to grace and witness the tournament.
Timer said she was much impressed with the standard and the enthusiasm of the
women in Africa for the game and said that what she had been hearing and seeing
was quite different.
It was the notable achievement that stunned the cricket enthusiast on the
continent when Tanzania women’s team emerged the overall winner of the inaugural
African Women Cricket Championship by setting an unbeaten record. Apart from
winning, the team scooped most of the individual awards i.e. all the four player
of the match awards, the best batter of the series and the best player of the
series.
Loud and clear we urge TCA to continue improving the Mini Cricket system. It is
a very essential programme since it makes the game more interesting for young
boys and girls.
Also worth mentioning is the weekend training system in which four different
primary schools get the opportunity to play against each other. This format has
brought a very positive impact on the game
Most of us still wonder how the primary school boys and girls turned into
national and international stars. The TCA Chairman, Zully Rhemtulla and his
committee must tell others the secrets used to make players like Hamis Abdallah,
Benson Mwita, Abhik Patwa, Aneth Banali or Mwanaidi Ibrahim into stars from
obscurity.
Abuse of EDs – not dying yet!
By Evarist Kagaruki
A front-page story in the issue of October 7, 2004 of this news-paper, with the
banner headline: Workers Abuse Sick Leave, makes interesting, but sad, reading.
It is about private-sector employees and public servants feigning sickness,
under cover of EDs (Excuses from Duty), and abusing the sick leave privilege.
I am saying the story is interesting because in these difficult times of
privatisation and retrenchments, one would have expected to see the workers
observing strict discipline and the dictates of hard work for fear of the hammer
of retrenchment. And sad, because paying wages to people who didn’t do any work,
imposes an unnecessary heavy burden on the economy. Workers who receive a pay
for the days they spent malingering, for example, are committing daylight
robbery and deserves severe punishment like any other thief.
Abuse of EDs is not a new phenomenon in this country, through it is part of the
long-established absenteeism and cheating-on-the-job work culture which
characterised our parastatals and the civil service (and, to a lesser extent the
private sector) during these “happy” days when employment was taken for granted;
when an employee on the shop floor, aware of the scandals of his boss above,
established his own “right” to work slowly; to use working hours for settling
his personal affairs; to receive unearned wages in overtime allegedly done, and
so forth!
Those were the days when employment and salary were guaranteed, regardless of
whether one worked or not (because the Exchequer almost routinely subsidised
parastatal operations). Certainly those times are over. But as The Express story
cited herein above reminds us, the habit among some employees (particularly in
the public sector) of feigning sickness and taking time off, under cover of EDs,
to leisure or to attend to some side-line income-generating activities, is not
dying yet!
One would have hoped that the on-going economic transformation, characterised,
as it were, by privatisation and the retrenchments that go with it, would give a
clear warning sign to Tanzanian workers that times have changed! And that they
too needed to change. Unfortunately, that seems to be a forlorn hope!
One of the oft-cited negative impacts of privatisation in this country, as
elsewhere, is the loss of jobs by a great number of workers in the public
sector. Divestiture of state-owned enterprises has meant massive retrenchments.
Those who lost their jobs include young, well-educated and skilled people who
would have made a good career for themselves had they been employed in the
private sector where the future has always been promising to the young qualified
job seekers.
Sadly, many of the jobs lost in the last decade of privatisation, and many of
those being shed today, will never come back, at least not in the short run.
Although privatisation and the new portfolios of investments are supposed to
spur the privatised firms to new, higher levels of productivity and
profitability, thus creating “more jobs”, the fact is that only a few of those
who had lost their jobs would regain them in the new enterprises. And those
should consider themselves extremely lucky. Why?
There are two fundamental reasons. The first one is that the number of
retrenched in the privatised parastatals far outstripped the number of jobs
created out of privatisation. This is essentially because, due to nepotism,
almost all parastatals employed excess personnel who literally had no work to
do, except gossiping and reminiscing over the historical Simba-Yanga football
matches. Most of these had low levels of education and lacked the necessary
skills and training.
In some corporations, work which was supposed to be done by, say, two persons,
was assigned to at least four people, which means that even long before the
advent of privatisation, two in every four employees, on the average, were
already redundant in any one parastatal, except that they hadn’t been actually
declared redundant by way of retrenchment.
The second reason why only few retrenched from parastatals would be absorbed in
the private sector is that our universities, colleges and schools churn out
thousands of job seekers every year who compete for the same job opportunities
existing in the sector. These stand a good chance of getting employed because
they are fresh, young and trainable.