Union, Z’bar govts to compare notes beyond joint affairs as well: minister

Dodoma. The government has embarked on a new drive aimed at strengthening the Union by involving ministries whose activities are not part of the Union affairs.

The minister of State in the Vice President’s Office (Union Affairs and Environment), Mr January Makamba, said this when tabling his office budget for 2016/17 in Parliament on Monday.

The move comes at a time when a number of thorny Union Articles have been addressed, according to Mr Makamba.

He told Parliament that under the new drive, his office would coordinate activities the Union and Zanzibar governments undertake outside the articles.

“My office has provided an arrangement under which ministries, institutions and departments dealing with non-Union issues to meet at least twice a year to discuss opportunities and challenges in the implementation of sectoral programmes and development plans,” he said.

He listed non-Union areas on whose cooperation the governments plan to capitalise and expand as Environment, Health, Transportation, Agriculture and Local Government.

“Our Union is the indication of our unity, national identity, inheritance and pride as Tanzanians. Without the Union there is no sense of nationhood. The Vice President’s Office has been entrusted with a noble obligation of coordinating Union affairs and improving cooperation in nonUnion issues undertaken by our two governments,” he said.

However, the resolve to also include non-Union dockets as a catalyst to the merger is likely to draw criticism, especially from the opposition Members of Parliament. For many years, the CUF law makers have led critics over the way the government was managing the 1964 merger between Zanzibar and Tanganyika or Mainland Tanzania, which gave birth to the United Republic of Tanzania.

To them, Tanzania Mainland, which ceded its autonomy to make Zanzibar feel safe and comfortable in the Union, is still calling the shots, while Zanzibar does not benefit that much from the arrangement, or so cynics say.

Such critics were strongly answered when the defunct Constitution Review Commission (CRC) Judge Joseph Warioba chaired proposed in its Second Draft Constitution that the Union structure be changed from the current two-tire governments to a three-tier system.

Along with the new structure, the Warioba Commission proposed the birth of Tanganyika government, which would team up with Zanzibar as equal partners to form a Union government.

This though was seen as an answer to Zanzibaris’ long quest for full autonomy, the proposal did not sit well with the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), which used its numerical strength in the Constituent Assembly (CA) to shoot it down.

Work done

But this did not deter Mr Makamba from enumerating accomplishments by his office in 2015/16. He told Parliament that his office had achieved a number of tasks, including addressing some serious issues threatening the 1964 merger. As for now, some nine thorny issues had been addressed.

In 2016/17, he said, they would continue dealing with pending bottlenecks, including management of oil and natural gas resources, registration of motor vehicles, Zanzibar government shares in the defunct East Africa Currency Board, distribution of the Bank of Tanzania’s profits and proposals on the establishment of a Joint Finance Committee which would, among other things, deal with distribution of income between the two governments.

Mr Makamba said in 2016/17, his office would continue looking for solutions for a number of challenges, including a controversy over Pay As You Earn (Paye) workers in Union institutions pay.

He said the Vice President’s Office would establish exact number of people working in the Union institutions in Zanzibar to determin calculations of revenue distribution.

Mr Makamba said another challenge was the Zanzibar involvement and benefits accrued from the East African Community’s (EAC) joint projects. As a solution for the problem, Mr Makamba informed Parliament that Tanzania had directed some EAC joint projects to Zanzibar. He listed some of the projects as improvement of Pemba and Abeid Aman Karume (Unguja) airports under finance support from the African Development Bank (AfDB).

Debate

Debating the issue, the former Zanzibar Chief Minister and retired minister for Home Affairs, Mr Shamsi Vuai Nahodha, urged leaders from both, Zanzibar and Mainland Tanzania to think outside the box if they wanted to address problems which had bedevilled the Union since its inception.

“I would like to quote William Shakespeare, he once wrote ‘there is time to hate and time to love’, it is high time we changed attitude and ideas over the Zanzibar situation,” said Mr Nahodha.

In a speech cheered by both camps in the House, Mr Nahodha insisted it was high time leaders opened a new page and looked at real problems facing Zanzibar.

Mr Nahodha noted that poor economy coupled with meagre resources were the main issue which dashed the Zanzibar development dream.

“I can tell you today that Zanzibar problems are deep-rooted in poor economy and little resources available. This is the main problem. But because we don’t want to critically look at this problem head on, people have developed wrong idea that separation will serve the purpose. Some people think that if we divide the little we have and go separate ways, we will be safe,” he said.

He noted that along similar thinking, the Constitution of Zanzibar was amended in 2010 to accommodate the Government of National Unity (GNU). However, the GNU was not a solution, as the root cause of the problem was not politically based, but it was rather economically-related one.

He said because of the poor economy and frustrations among wananchi, every politician thought he could lead Zanzibar and people thought fighting for top political posts could bring changes.

Mr Nahodha said in the 2015/16 fiscal year, Zanzibar endorsed about Sh840 million for both development and recurrent expenditure, but only between 60 and 70 per cent of the endorsed Budget was released.

“In that case, a strong economy must support weak economy, Zanzibar is weak and thus Tanzania Mainland must come up for help. I was a Chief Minister for a long time and I have served in the Union government for some years. We’ve been discussing many issues, including dividing revenues between Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar, but so far there is no implementation,” he said.

For his part, the deputy minister for Home Affairs, Mr Hamad Yusuf Masauni, said the Opposition’s claims that the government used police officers from Mainland Tanzania to suppress the camp in the Isles were unfounded. He said Zanzibar had over 1,500 polling centres and that each centre needed at least two police officers, thus there was no way the government could avoid using police officers from the Mainland.

“This is part of our resolve to ensure peace and security prevail,” he insisted.

The minister for Defence, Dr Hussein Mwinyi, said there would have been no election in Zanzibar if members of the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) were not called in to assist.

He said soldiers were in alert during the election period and that all important areas were under the TPDF watch.

He was responding to criticism from the CUF MPs that the Zanzibar election last year was marred by threats resulting from high presence of soldiers.