Focus on pay increases for civil servants

The Tanzanian government has raised the salaries of civil servants by between nine percent and 12.5 percent in its 2004/05 budget, but workers say the rises are not keeping pace with expenses. "Most civil servants can hardly survive from pay check to pay check even after the salary increase," the secretary-general of the Tanzania Federation of Free Trade Unions, Nestory Ngulla, told IRIN in an interview. Tanzania is one of the poorest countries in the world with more than half of the population living on less than US $1 a day. Nancy Kimaro is a 31-year-old primary school teacher in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. She earns a monthly salary of Tshs 68,000 ($68). She has to sell buns to her pupils and teach two tuition classes every weekend to make ends meet. "I pay a monthly rent of Tshs 30,000 for my house, spend Tshs 15,000 for my transport and Tshs 10,000 for nursery school for my daughter, and that eats up about my entire salary. Where do I get the extra money for food and medical expenses?" She asked. "I am a single mother and have a five-year-old daughter to take care of. My daughter and I will continue living from hand to mouth even with the new salary increase." Pay rise inadequate Trade union leaders echo Kimaro's concerns, saying the salary increase for civil servants announced by the Tanzanian government is too small to make any positive impact in the lives of lowly paid public servants. "This is just peanuts, there is no way civil servants at the lower end of the salary scale can meet their basic needs with these types of salaries," said Ngulla. The salary increase meant that the minimum monthly salary for civil servants have been raised from around Tshs 55,000 to Tshs 61,000. On the other end of the spectrum, the monthly salary of the highest-paid civil servants had also been raised, from around Tshs 800,000 to over Tshs 1 million. "We had initially recommended to the government that the minimum salary for civil servants should [be] Tshs 139,000, but later agreed to compromise for Tshs 65,000," Ngulla added. "However, the government has let us down by increasing the minimum wage to just Tshs 61,000, while we had in fact all agreed to settle for Tshs 65,000 as the mutually acceptable figure." Ngulla lamented the gap between the lowest- and highest-paid civil servants in the country, describing the situation as "unacceptable." Need for overhaul of pay structure "The whole salary structure for civil servants must be overhauled to reduce the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom of the salary scale. The government must also ensure that workers are paid according to their performance," he said. He added: "Teachers, nurses, doctors and policemen are all complaining that their salaries are woefully low; it's only the politicians who seem to be smiling all the way to the bank at the end of every month." Ngulla vowed to mobilise trade union leaders to pressure the government to improve the salaries of civil servants and reduce the gap between minimum wage and top public servants. "There is a tendency of politicians paying themselves too much money, like what our members of parliament are doing at the expense of the majority of civil servants like teachers who are poorly paid," he said. Tanzania's Minister of State in the President's Office responsible for Civil Service Management, Mary Nagu, announced in parliament recently that the government would continue with reforms to ensure that Tanzania had an efficient public service. Plan to improve civil service President Benjamin Mkapa in 2000 launched the country's 12-year programme aimed at boosting the efficiency of the civil service. He said the Public Service Reform Programme 2000/2011 (PSRP) demanded not only changes of structures, systems and work environment, but also changes in culture, attitudes and behaviour of public servants. The overall objective of the programme was to achieve a "smaller, affordable, well-compensated, efficient and effectively performing civil service". The programme has so far been implemented in two phases. The first involved restoration of the structural preconditions to support fiscal stabilisation measures, including the removal of ghost workers, staff retrenchment, rationalisation of the pay and grading system, and reinstatement of establishment and payroll controls. The second phase deals with institutional improvements, including a redefinition of the role of government, restructuring for organisational effectiveness and efficiency, outsourcing certain services, decentralisation of service delivery, and managerial capacity building. The government has also reduced the number of civil servants by approximately 27 percent from about 355,000 in 1992 to 260,000 in 2004. Recruitment was also encouraged into certain key sectors such as education, health and law. Critics of the programme say that although the government has taken important steps towards restructuring its civil service, little progress have been made in revamping pay and promotion policies. "Let's face it, salaries for civil service jobs in the country are just too low even with the new salary increase," Ngulla said.