By
Frederick Fussi | 21 February 2014
Many
Tanzanians have different opposing views following the appeal of Constituent
Assembly members about their argument of lowly paid allowances.
I
have been so much tempted to share my views concerning the matter because of
two main reasons.
Firstly,
I did my undergraduate research on the impact of allowances on organizational
performance; the case study of Ilala Municipality. Secondly, the argument of CA
members shall enable the public to understand my theory on the relationship
between resources and leadership. Today I will not embark on the former reason
but the later.
My
theory on resources and leadership asserts that resources are obvious scarce
and leaders’ ability to allocate resources fairly to their people is naturally
strong but leaders artificially choose to become weak at the expense of
opportunities, life pressures and attitude and hence vice versa is true. You
therefore need to have leaders who choose to remain strong in whatever pressing
situations.
The
CA members are naturally strong to accept the allocated allowances but they
became weak over the opportunity they got to write our new constitution, life
pressures that the allowances are inadequate for them to survive in Dodoma and
attitude that they think to deserve an increased pay.
I
see their argument into five faces. Firstly the nation and its government is
suffering from a severe lack of money to adequately finance its activities
including descent allowances for the CA members. This is because the best
assumption remains that; if they were decently paid they would not lament. This
is enough to illustrate that most Tanzanians aren't paid decently.
Secondly,
CA members are portraying a true image on how most of Tanzanians are poor
income earners. A primary school teacher paid Shs. 300,000 per month is
ironically represented by a CA member lamenting that Shs.300, 000 per day paid
in a total of 70 days to 90 days is a low payment. A critical lesson should be
drawn here.
Thirdly,
there are many other Tanzanians whose voice of being lowly paid have not been
adequately amplified, therefore the CA members should not forget that many of
us are also lowly paid and thus they should write the constitution with an agony
of low payment of allowance and consequently write the citizen centered
constitution that cares about well-paid salaries.
Fourthly;
it also portrayed an image of how we Tanzanians are not serious with important
issues. Instead of the CA members to concentrate on the important issue of
writing the strong and lasting constitution they are moved by personal interest
on asking increased allowances.
Fifthly,
it portrays that we did not need the new constitution and that our problem was
not the new constitution rather our genuine need is equitable and fairly share
of the national cake among Tanzanians. The allowances of all CA members in
aggregate would make more than 10 billion; this is a national cake, worth to be
wisely shared with a justified cause and writing new constitution is one of
them.
The
fight over increased allowances is an indication that the roots of our problems
are rarely addressed as they appear to be.
One needs a critical eye to debate over the this issue. This should be
an alarm over the upcoming elections in 2014 for local government and General
Elections in 2015, we need to get leaders whose eyes day and night are looking
at the roots of our problems. Knowing the root of the problem is to solve the
problem ninety nine percent, one remaining percent is obvious the conclusion
chapter of the solution.
