President Magufuli reassures teachers over arrears of Sh215bn

 Dar es Salaam. President John Magufuli yesterday assured teachers of paying their Sh215 billion arrears before August this year.
This comes after the teachers’ union called on the government to, among other things, pay the arrears so that they can surmount challenges facing them.
The President said according to the announcement from the Public Service Social Security Fund (PSSSF), the fund had received and paid Sh1.2 trillion to 15,029 retired teachers between August 2018 and June 3 this year.
President Magufuli made the remarks when inaugurating a live broadcast of Tanzania Teachers Association (CWT) general election meeting held in Dodoma.
He said that, in the latest state-ment issued by the ministry of Finance and Planning, there was a total of 2,631 teachers demand-ing from the government a total of Sh215 billion.“I want to assure you that the pending arrears will be paid before August this year,” said
The President also said that since November 2015, the gov-ernment had paid public servants salaries amounting to Sh115.3 billion, out of which Sh38.3 billion was paid to 35,805 teachers, according to the information availed to him by the ministry of Finance and Planning.
He also said that the govern-ment had paid a total of Sh358.1 billion in acation funding and transfers for public servants.
The head of state further said the government would continue to release payments after comple-tion of verification processes.
“It is in fact a review because some of these debts must be veri-fied to prove if they are genuine or not,” said the President.Following the Tanzania Teachers Union (CWT) plea to the government to employ more teachers who would take care of increased enrollments been caused by the free education system, President Magufuli said more teachers will be employed this year.
“In the current financial year, the government will employ 13,526 new teachers,” he said.
The Commander-in-Chief also noted that the teaching cadre was the leading public service, which has 266,905 workers out of 524,295: equivalent to 51 percent of all employees.
In order to tackle the problem of fraud in public servants, the government was developing an electronic system that would collect and verify debts of all public servants, including teachers.
“This system will be put to the test this month here in Dodoma, and if it shows success, it will be used across the country,” the President said.