Gregory Teu

The government plans to turn the Kilimanjaro Machine Tools Co. Ltd (KMTC) area into an industrial estate for promoting small and medium scale entrepreneurs to undertake manufacturing activities.

In supporting the KMTC, the government will also survey 250 hectares for the purpose before implementing the strategy.

The Deputy Minister for Industry and Trade Gregory Teu revealed this in the House yesterday when responding to a supplementary question posed by Joseph Selasin (Rombo, Chadema).

The MP had wanted to know if the government planned to allocate the area to entrepreneurs after being left idle for a long time.

“The government plans to survey and examine the area to be used for small and medium industries,” the Deputy Minister responded without disclosing exactly when the exercise will start.

Earlier, Hai legislator (Chadema) and leader of Opposition in Parliament Freeman Mbowe had asked in his basic question to explain government initiatives being taken to protect and promote the KMTC from deterioration.

In his reaction, the Deputy Minister said the government had spent 365.1m/- on maintaining and keeping the industry. He informed that current market value for the KMTC property (including machines, buildings and land) is 11.4bn/-.

He said the government, through the National Development Cooperation (NDC), is scouting around for investors and donors to rehabilitate the industry and resume operations.

“Our machines are outdated; we need bland new machines for the KMTC to resume operations. Manufacturing vital for economic growth,” he stressed.

The Deputy Minister said the government was implementing deferent initiatives to put the area and buildings conducive to investors, and that it had already started rehabilitating the administration block; and soon would do the same for machine and garage buildings.

Meanwhile, the government assured the public that it would carry out an analysis to determine workers who were not paid their pensions after some industries stopped operations during privatisation of public institutions.

“We need to study them to establish the truth as to why they did get rightful payments when the industries were privatised,” the Deputy Minister said when responding to a supplementary question posed by Arumelu-East legislator (Chadema) Joshua Nasari.