Rita blocks account of TBL staff fund

The Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (Rita) has frozen the bank account of the dissolved Tanzania Breweries Limited (TBL) Employees Share Ownership Trust pending investigations.

As a result, the freeze has halted payment of the second tranche of benefits to members of the Trust Fund who are TBL employees. This comes after about 2,000 ex-employees of the brewer complained against being sidelined from the payment.

According to a Rita letter sent to the TBL management dated December 22, last year, the management was instructed to suspend the second programme of payment disbursements from the Trust until auditing is done by the appropriate government auditors.

The Rita letter cites letters from the TBL management on the subject matter – and letters from the aggrieved ex-employees, confirming that the agency has taken its decision under section 23 (1) of the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency Act.

“I am instructing you, under section 20 (1) and (6), to furnish me with the audited accounts of the Trust by 29th December 2017 … Non-compliancy with this directive will lead me to invoke the provisions of section 23 (1) of the Act, and distribute same under that section,” the letter, signed by acting Rita administrator general Emmy Hudson, says in part. Rita marketing and public relations manager Josephat Kimaro told The Citizen in an exclusive interview that Rita had received a complaint about the dispute between the brewer’s ex-employees and the TBL Employees Share Ownership Trust. As a consequence, the regulatory authority had just as promptly frozen the trust’s account pending thorough investigations under the law.

“We have suspended the activities of the TBL Trust until the dispute is resolved; it is our responsibility (to do so) under the law,” Mr Kimaro said.

Speaking to The Citizen in Dar es Salaam yesterday, a representative of the ex-workers, who is also a founding trustee, Mr Saidi Gugu, said they had already filed several complaints with various government authorities on the discriminatory payments that were being made from the Trust Fund. These had already amounted to more than Sh130 billion.

“Under the law governing the TBL Trust, the TBL management was supposed to effectuate dissolution of (the Trust) this year – and make payments to ex-workers as due. But, instead, the TBL management decided to make payments to existing workers in December last year, thus discriminating against thousands of former TBL workers,” a clearly bitter Mr Gugu said by way of elaboration.

He cited several letters of complaint whose copies he readily availed to The Citizen, including two letters addressed to Rita and dated February 2 and 7, this year, that list complaints against violation of procedures regarding the Trust.

Another letter that’s more or less on the same lines dated January 26, this year, was addressed to the office of the Dar es Salaam regional commissioner.

“We suggest that a committee be formed to investigate the whole issue – and, in case it will be found that there was misappropriation of any of the Trustee’s funds, then stern legal measures should be taken against all those who participated in that (dirty) game,” the letter sent to the Dar es Salaam RC reads in part.

The head of legal affairs at TBL told The Citizen that the issue is already at the High Court of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam for further action as found appropriate.

A TBL document signed by the company’s chief executive, Mr Roberto Jarin, and which was seen by this writer, shows that the TBL management has halted payments from the Trust Fund following the freezing of the Trust Account by Rita. The Citizen has also got hold of a letter from the Tanzania Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers (Tuico) which defends the decision of the TBL Trust to release the funds.

Other available documents show that the TBL Trust was formally registered by the Registrar of Trusts in 1998, with a seed capital of Sh660 million that was approved by the TBL management and workers’ representatives.