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PM tells civil servants to change mentality
2006-02-18 09:16:38
By Juma Thomas, Dodoma
Prime Minister Edward Lowassa adjourned the first Bunge session yesterday with a warning to lazy and incompetent civil servants to pull up their socks or risk being laid off.
In a half-an-hour address, Lowassa told civil servants to serve wananchi diligently or risk being sacked.
’One area that does not require money, but which troubles wananchi most is the lack of seriousness on the part of government workers’ inability to solve their problems,’ the PM said.
He said it was inconceivable that people travel long distances from upcountry to Dar es Salaam to see the Prime Minister or the President about problems that could be tackled at the district level.
Lowassa said the concept of good governance should trickle down to the grassroots. He told district authorities to change their work mentality and be responsible to the people.
’When the Prime Minister’s Office assumes the functions of the offices of the regional or district commissioners, do we need to have such people? I think the best we deserve is to sack them,’ he said.
Lowassa said the government had a timeframe to honour the promises it made to wananchi during election campaigns.
The work ahead was to translate the promises into achievements.
’In doing this, we must organise ourselves right from the local to central government levels,’ he said.
The Prime Minister said the government needed serious and good leaders who can make quick and sound decisions.
He, however, said that the government’s development programmes could only bring about meaningful results if labour capital is put to good use.
Lowassa said that, according to the 2002 census, 39.6 per cent of the country’s population is between the ages of 18 and 60 years. This group, he said, must strive to bring about desirable changes.
He called on everybody to play his or her part to steer economic development. He said this could only be achieved if people learned to value time.
’Much of our time is spent on unproductive activities. We should change and become time-conscious,’ he said.
He said that, while on average working hours per week in the developed nations range between 40 and 70 hours, in the developing world, including Tanzania, it is between 13 and 26 hours.
The Prime Minister called on wananchi to strive to better their lives. He said to empower people economically, the government had prepared laws on export processing zones and special economic zones.
He said the two laws, which aim at creating conducive environment for local and foreign investors would help in boosting the country’s economy and create more job opportunities.
The Parliament was adjourned until March 28, this year.
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