The culture of sitting allowances in Tanzania

All my working life I did health research in remote villages in Tanzania. Over time I accumulate a wealth of experience and have many tales to talk about. One such story is about sitting allowance: money paid to individuals for participating in a meeting or a workshop.

I was doing research on elephantiasis in Kibiti in the early nineties, in those days it took a good three hours by road to reach Kibiti from Dar. I was to start a household questionnaire study the next day and had all the required permissions and approvals from the district and village authorities but was rightly advised to meet with ten cell balozi(s) so that they are informed to avoid any problems. Thus I called a meeting at 4 pm of all the balozi(s) of the village, they all promptly responded and was able to start the meeting on time. After about 45 minutes of explanations and answering their questions the last question was about kifuta jasho.

As a member of initially the academic board and latter senate at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (Muhas) it was customary to be paid sitting allowance with heavy tea breaks and lunch. These meetings took place at Muhas during the working hours. The same practice was at University of Dar es Salaam.

Everywhere in Tanzania, meetings organised by donors, NGOs or government the culture of “sitting allowance” is nourished is acceptable, formalised and legalised. The concept is to pay so that participation is guaranteed in these endless “workshops” that have become a parallel salary. The sitting allowance exercise is now a ritual and included in the budgets and has percolated the full range of the society.

Why should participants at training workshops held within their city or institution and in some cases even in their offices or departments ask to be paid an allowance to take part in the workshop? This is a sad development in the sense that it is slowly creating a culture of dependence on workshops for extra incomes. The carrot is the sitting allowance rather than the outputs of such events. What is important is the number of people attending and how heavy is the envelope. After all statistics don’t lie but statisticians do.

So the question still lingers-were the balozi(s) right or wrong to demand money for an activity, which in the long term would benefit their people, and more so this was just information sharing-they had no physical role in the study.

This culture of sitting allowance is now slowly changing especially for training workshops-the reason is why pay someone when they are receiving something akin to continuous education for their own benefit, thus its now referred as either transport allowance or lunch allowance (though a heavy, unhealthy lunch is invariably served) and this terminology looks more dignified. However this transport allowance is a flat rate not reflecting the distance or means of transport used. In most cases they use office transport and the distance could be a few steps to some kilometers. It is also common that some high-ranking officers register for these workshops, disappear the whole time (perhaps to go back to work), and return to have lunch and/or collect the allowance. Another culture is to invite some senior officer (mostly a minister or his deputy) to open the meeting. In this case (s)he will read the prepared and doctored speech verbatim and immediately leave the meeting. This would earn him/her two envelops-one for the speech and one as sitting allowance cum transport cum lunch allowance. This is how donors’ funds are put to use. Why donors and aid agencies are not questioning his practice? I have raised this question and the reply was simple-no reason to rock the boat because the paperwork is in order.

Thinking aloud I see the problem stems from our holy parliament. Our esteem elected members of parliament are simultaneously paid fat salaries, per diems and lavish sitting allowances for attending parliament sessions. This is the route cause of the culture and thus the balozi(s) were just following the nyayo.

Your Excellency, Mr President take another bold decision – ban all sitting allowances across the board, initially many will be unhappy and will shout. Let them do so, but in the long run you will be remembered for taking the decision. Meanwhile, money saved from ghost workers, sitting allowances etc will enable you to increase the salaries of civil servants, make them more accountable and responsible.