Tanzania pays out Sh5.8bn to 30,000 former EAC workers

DAR ES SALAAM

The government of Tanzania has said that it spent $58.4 million (Ksh5.8bn) to pay retirement and other benefits to more than 30,000 former employees of the former East African Community (EAC), which once collapsed in 1997.

Mr Philip Mpango, the east African nation’s Minister for Finance and Planning, told the National Assembly that the last batch of the 269 retirees were paid between 2011 and 2013. 

The minister said between 2005 and 2010 some 31,519 out of 31,831 retirees were paid their statutory dues.

“It should be noted that those who were paid were those who came forward and submitted their claims,” Mr Mpango told the House in the country’s political capital Dodoma.

He said after settlement of a court case which the retirees filed against the government, the two sides signed an agreement to the effect that no one should raise the demands any further.

“We settled the matter out of the court,” the minister said.

Mr George Masaju, the Attorney-General, said in January this year the Court of Appeal made a ruling that the government should not pay anyone else because all the deserving retirees had been paid.

Meanwhile, Tanzanian authorities have said they were reviewing contracts of privatised industries with a view to repossessing poor performing factories.

Medard Kalemani, the Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals, told Parliament in Dodoma that industries to be repossessed will be allocated to other investors who were capable of developing them.

Speaking on behalf of the Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, Mr Charles Mwijage, Mr Kalemani said the government recognized the need to review factories which were privatised, but were not functioning in order to increase employment and promote economic growth.

The minister was responding to a question by Magomeni Member of Parliament Jamali Kassim Ali who had wanted to know how the government was prepared to revive factories which were not functioning.