50m/- village grants for release soon

If all goes well, the government will start disbursing the promised 50m/- to each village, effective next April and prospective beneficiaries have been told to form productive groups to qualify for the grants. 

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa explained here that each village in the country stands to receive 50m/- that will be availed through the village chairpersons and executive officers.

The officers will therefore allocate the amount to the potential recipients.

“The government remembers very well that President John Magufuli had promised to give out 50m/- to every village in the country but the process has not yet started...we are working on a proper, fool-proof system to ensure that all the right beneficiaries get the funding,” said Mr Majaliwa, assuring effective next April, the money will be disbursed.

The Premier made the pledge while addressing a mammoth rally at Mbulu Township’s Getini grounds in his tour of Manyara region. He said the government has all the money needed to meet the citizens’ needs.

“We have cleared ghost workers, eliminated ghost students, took drastic steps against scrupulous officials who used to squander public funds and closed all loopholes related to theft of public money...now the state is working to send back the money to the ordinary Tanzanians,” he said.

The government will grant each village 50m/-, translating into a 500bn/- budget for nearly 10,000 villages in the country.

Mr Majaliwa advised Mbulu residents and all Tanzanians to form productive groups that can efficiently make use of the Presidential funding.

Meanwhile, the Premier has ordered all head teachers, teachers and committees of public schools in the country to stop forthwith soliciting contributions from parents under some real or imaginary causes.

“When the government directed basic education to be free, we meant it to be free, I don’t want to hear parents being asked to contribute money for examinations, desks, school meals or books,” said Mr Majaliwa, advising all parents to report any school, teacher or headmaster behaving on the contrary. He as well directed relevant authorities to crosscheck data on sugar demand and supply.

Tanzania, with a 50 million population is reportedly consuming 420,000 tones of sugar per year, while its neighbour Kenya, with 44 million people consumes 800,000 tones. The demand level, said the Prime Minister, must be confirmed if the country’s sugar shortage has to be addressed.

“We are probably getting wrong figures or reports as far as the commodity demand in Tanzania is concerned,” he said. Tanzania is reported to face the shortage of over 250,000 tones of sugar annually, compelling the country to import the sweetening commodity to supplement the domestic production.

The Premier expressed concern over the mathematics behind sugar intake, demand and supply data as he visited Manyara Sugar Company Limited, a sugar churning facility that operates from Magugu Ward of Babati-Rural District.

Mr Majaliwa ordered the Ministries of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries; and Industry, Trade and Investment to re-check the reports and current figures regarding the actual sugar requirements in the country, cautioning that there could be under-supply of the commodity due to incorrect data.

But, Manyara Sugar intends to double its annual production from the current 2,000 to 4,000 tones soon after installing the new machinery.In a statement read before the Premier, the firm representative, Mr Deepak Adedra, said: “With modern, digitalised machinery, our factory will ably process 650 tones of sugarcane daily from the current 500 tones that the facility handles daily,” said the MSCL official, adding that effective 2018 the plant will be processing 750 tones, daily.

Mr Majaliwa lauded the factory’s support to the local growers in Babati, citing quality seedlings and reliable markets to peasants whose farms surround the plant.

The factory management said should the local growers expand their sugarcane farms to 10,000 acres, the plant will be able to produce 30,000 tones of sugar per year and help to reduce the country’s sugar shortage.