Tanzanian president sacks senior officials

7th November 2017 By: African News Agency

Tanzanian president sacks senior officials

Tanzanian President John Magufuli
Photo by: Reuters

Two senior Tanzanian officials who failed to remember how much money was allocated by the government in their respective districts for public road construction projects, have been sacked by President John Magufuli, Reuters reported Tuesday.

A statement issued by the president’s office said the sacked director of the Bukoba Municipal Council, Erasto Aron Mfugale, and the director of the Bukoba Rural Municipal Council, Mwantum Kitwana Dau, would be assigned to other duties.

No reason, however, was given to explain their dismissal.

But it appeared Magufuli was dissatisfied with Dau’s memory lapse and response to his question about the amount of money spent on public road construction projects.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Magufuli said at the launch of a new airport in the lakeside town of Bukoba on Monday.

Magufuli launched a reform drive after he was elected in 2015 and promised to transform the East African’s corruption-riddled economy.

To this end, he has fired thousands of civil servants over the last two years in his crackdown on government inefficiency and corruption.

These include 20,000 “ghost workers” from the public service payroll and 12,000 government employees for forging their academic transcripts.

The president is renowned for his recall of data and being able to regularly cite monetary figures and exact lengths of roads.