Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-09 23:39:00|Editor: yan
DAR ES SALAAM, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian President John Magufuli who was elected in 2015 has honored his election campaign promises beyond imagination, a senior government official said Tuesday.
Hassan Abbasi, director of the Tanzania Information Services and chief government spokesperson, said the president and his government are vigorously continuing to work towards transforming peoples' lives.
Abbasi said Magufuli's transformation effect can be seen across all fronts including fighting corruption, controlling wasteful spending and poverty alleviation.
On fighting corruption, Abbasi said Magufuli came into power at a time when Tanzania like many other countries in Africa was marred by allegations of prevalence of corruption in many sectors and no serious actions were being taken.
"After he had taken the oath of office, he first pursued his anti corruption crusade by instilling institutional reforms including revamping of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau by appointing new leadership and directing them to act promptly in all anti-corruption cases, petty or grand," he told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.
In July 2017, the president honored his promise to establish a special court for prosecuting corruption and other economic crimes, said the chief spokesperson.
The court has received more than 50 cases by now, and trials for some of them have been completed, and others are still ongoing.
With the establishment of the court, one simple and clear message is, corruption is seriously being pursued in Tanzania, he added.
As a result, government revenues have increased from merely 850 billion Tanzanian shillings (about 367.6 million U.S. dollars) a month to a staggering 1.3 trillion Tanzanian shillings (about 562 million U.S. dollars) a month.
On controlling wasteful spending, the president has pursued this promise to greater heights, said Abbasi, adding that apart from ensuring the government revenues go up, he has ensured that taxpayers' money is well spent to transform peoples' lives than individuals.
"Towards that end, he (Magufuli) has restricted foreign travels by public officials to save money from huge delegations, giving more mandate to the country's diplomats abroad to represent the country," said the chief spokesperson.
Magufuli, on several occasions, has ordered that funds designated to be used for costly public celebrations of national festivals to be channeled to fund people oriented projects like construction of roads, bridges or hospitals.
Another level of controlling wasteful spending include making sure the government pay roll is clean.
As a result, 19,708 ghost workers who were receiving a total of 19.8 billion Tanzanian shillings a month without being in the work place were removed, said Abbasi, adding that the president also removed from public service other 14,000 public servants who did not have the minimum academic qualification.
The president did not stop there, in the education sector which is government funded through subsidy or direct student loans, more than 50,000 ghost students were all relieved of their studies.
"The president's philosophy which is also supported by many Tanzanians for now is clear: we are not poor, we are endowed with everything to make Tanzania a donor country, but we must carefully spend every cent of our revenues towards changing lives of majority of Tanzanians," he said.
According to Abbasi, all these efforts, coupled with others including the industrialization of the economy and modernization of the health sector are meant to pull Tanzanians out of poverty through increased income generation.
The Tanzania Bureau of Statistics rebased data of 2019 indicates an improved GDP per capital income, from 1.6 million Tanzanian shillings in 2013 to 2.33 million Tanzanian shillings in 2017.
Asked how he sees Tanzania in the next 10 years, Abbasi said Tanzania will be a case for the rest of Africa and the world to study.