Primary teachers’ claims in Tanzania to be verified soon

The long standing unpaid remunerations for primary teachers in Tanzania together with other things are in review as ;per the promise and may be will be solved soon. In view of this, the government will also promote all qualified public school teachers in the course of this year after suspension of the process some two years ago. The Deputy Minister of State in the President’s Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments), Mr Josephat Kakunda told a parliamentary session here yesterday that “scale up-gradation” would be concurrent with salary increase. “ There has been no grade review for the past two years. We are preparing to resume the exercise which we suspended during the 2016/17 and 2017/2018 financial years,” Mr Kakunda explained. He was responding to a supplementary question from the Karagwe MP, Mr Innocent Bishungwa. The lawmaker had wanted to know the government’s timeframe for payment of annual increments to public school teachers as well as upgrading their scales. Mr Kakunda explained that the government had suspended the exercise to pave the way for the civil servants’ verification exercise. The process involved reviewing phantom workers in the paymaster general roster and flush out unqualified officers who had fake academic certificates. “This is the main reason why the crucial exercise was put on hold,” he told parliamentarians. Meanwhile, the government announced that it was clearing an outstanding teachers’ debt, saying as of June 30, 2017 a sum of 14.23bn/- was paid to 18,865 of them. The outstanding unpaid for 12,284 primary and 6,581 secondary school teachers was 69.28bn/-. The deputy minister said the government was committed to continue paying all legible teachers. He also informed the House that the government had resolved to establish a Teachers Service Commission (TSC) to help address challenges facing public school teachers. A budget to the tune of 12.42bn/- was approved in the 2017/18 financial year to support the teachers commission, but the Treasury had released only 4.62bn/- so far, he further explained. MPs pressed the government to seriously address longstanding teachers’ pro