The two were sent packing yesterday in an apparent purge by President John Magufuli targeting those implicated by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) in his 2014/15 report.
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) Director General, Dr Ally Yahya Simba, and board chairman Prof Haji Semboja became the first high ranking casualties of the damning report by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG).
The two were sent packing yesterday in an apparent purge by President John Magufuli targeting those implicated by the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) in his 2014/15 report.
A statement by State House acting director of communication Gerson Msigwa said President Magufuli fired Dr Simba and dissolved the five-member board headed by Prof Semboja over a reported loss of Sh400 billion yearly in mobile phone tax revenue.
The huge loss was detailed in the CAG Report that was tabled in Parliament on Monday and was blamed on a Sh42 billion contract entered between TCRA and Switzerland based Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS). The contract signed in 2013 was to undertake a Telecommunication Traffic Monitoring System (TTMS).
News of the sacking followed what was described as a working meeting earlier in the day between the President and top leadership of TCRA, Bank of Tanzania (BoT), Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) and several permanent secretaries. The ministers for transport, Prof Makame Mbarawa and Chief Secretary John Kijazi were present.
It was during this meeting that the SGS contract was thoroughly reviewed before the President decided to sack the two. Both Dr Simba and Prof Semboja were at the meeting, with sources in the meeting telling The Citizen that the duo left the Magogoni address knowing they had been relieved of their duties. Dr Simba was appointed by the then President Jakaya Kikwete in July 2015 to replace the long-serving director general, Prof John Nkoma.
“The meeting was thorough and reviewed all aspects of the TTMS contract. President Magufuli told the TCRA officials on thier face that they had failed the government before announcing he would not wish to continue having them,” said our source who requested for anonymity because he was not the official spokesperson.
According to the informant, the Head of State was incensed that the government continued to lose billions of shillings from uncollected tax from mobile companies due to a critical omission in the contract to monitor airtime on local calls.
The President directed Prof Mbarawa to immediately appoint an acting DG to assume Dr Simba’s role and also ordered that the TCRA contract with SGS be reviewed to include the component for local airtime monitoring so that the mobile firms can begin paying the appropriate tax. “Take immediate steps to ensure we are collecting all tax due to the government and note that I will not hesitate to act on anyone who will frustrate this order,” Dr Magufuli told the minister.
Prof Mbarawa last week visited TCRA headquarters during which he raised concern with the agency’s role in helping the government to accurately determine what the mobile companies that make trillions of shillings in income every year should pay in taxes. He said while the SGS system had helped streamline tax on international call traffic, it was buffling why local calls that are the mainstay of the mobile firms had not been touched.
Even though the CAG Report was made public on Monday, it was handed over to the President a fortnight earlier. The report in several volumes, details many cases of public funds pilferage through shoddy contracts, outright embezzlement and thievery by officials and sheer lethargy on the part of management.
The move against the TCRA officials would be the first known case since Monday directly linked to the findings by the CAG whose reports in the past have largely gone without serious action taken against officials shown as culpable in the loss of taxpayers’ funds.
Calls have intensified lately to have the annual reports used to hold accountable those found to have abused their powers and caused the government losses running into billions of shillings.
Dr Magufuli who has defined his early presidency as one that will not condone graft and or business- as-usual style of public resource management may just be the first President to have directly and openly used the CAG Report in such a manner.
