Unanswered questions as BRN disbanded

Dar es Salaam. President John Magufuli has disbanded the special unit formed by his predecessor, Mr Jakaya Kikwete in 2013, to help speed up delivery of key government development objectives.

But the disbandment of the President’s Delivery Bureau (PDB), which popularized the Big Results Now (BRN) slogan, will leave many unanswered questions about continuity of tested public service delivery programmes beyond the office terms of their founders or champions.

Even though the unit appeared to have gone under after change of regime in 2015, President Magufuli yesterday formally bid its staff farewell at the State House in Dar es Salaam. A statement released by his spokesperson Gerson Msigwa said the PDB staff would be absorbed in other government departments.

A number of them have since left to join the private sector, including its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Omari Issa, who now heads Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete Foundation.

The PDB has suffered a similar fate as several other offices formerly based at the State House but whose roles Dr Magufuli either abolished or moved elsewhere.

President Kikwete introduced the PDB with an eye on scaling the government’s delivery on key sectors of economic production as expounded in the development vision 2025. It coined the BRN strategy to drive the message home. He wanted to peel off the many layers of government bureaucracy and personally be able to push for quick project implementation for quick output.

PDB states in its website: “Big Results Now! (BRN) is a Delivery Methodology….to transform Tanzania’s public service delivery to help achieve its…Vision 2025 aspirations.”

The model was borrowed from Malaysia whose economy, despite being in the same level with Tanzania at independence, grew exponentially over the last decades to join the middle income countries while Tanzania has struggled to escape poverty.

In fact President Kikwete kept the minister without portfolio in the Malaysian government Mr Dato Sri Idris Jala as an advisor for the BRN initiative. Mr Jala has also joined the ex-President’s foundation launched early in the year to champion social development causes he says have defined his public service career as a politician.

The BRN issued its first scorecard in 2014 and while it was still unclear if the new President would embrace it, it became clear in the last budget that no funds would be set aside for its activities, inevitably rendering it functionless.

REACTIONS

Yesterday, commentators gave mixed views on the implication of the decision to abandon BRN and what the message President Magufuli may be sending out to those in his administration and the public in general.

The fifth president of Tanzania, however, has left little room to discern his style of leadership and will stop at nothing to drive his point home. Yesterday the President did not offer an explicit reason why he was abandoning the BRN despite the fact that billions of shillings had been spent on its rollout only two years into his ascendancy to the presidency.

“I acknowledge that you are diligent workers with important knowledge and skills in our country, you have contributed immensely while at PDB and I remain optimistic that you will continue to be the same and do more in the offices that your will be assigned,” said the President during the farewell function.

Those interviewed by The Citizen were of the view that the President may be taking a route different than that of his predecessor, requiring establishment of his administration’s own delivery systems.

But some felt the change is the reflection of the problems that bedevil most African countries where nations’ development programmes are not long-lasting and were dependent on the whims of individual leaders or political parties.

The deputy shadow minister for finance and planning Mr David Silinde (Momba-Chadema) said he isn’t surprised by President Magufuli’s decision.

Mr Silinde said they had been told during budget sessions that the PDB would be disbanded. Mr Silinde said his only worry is that the decision shows that there is lack of a national vision and how it should be insulated against political interference.

“Under these circumstances if the country gets a bad President he/she can undo what his or her predecessors have done because we lack a collective national vision,” said Mr Silinde.

Mr Aloyce Mwamanga of the Tanzania Chamber for Commerce, Industry and Agriculture said it would be too early to judge whether the government is right or wrong to disband the PDB. He said the public will be in a good position to judge when a report on whether PDB fulfilled its responsibilities is tabled.

Professor Delphin Rwegasira of the University of Dar es Salaam Department of Economic said the President enjoys the mandate to dissolve any public institution.

“Through the two budgets since he assumed office, President Magufuli has shown his vision, which is industrialization; I think he has deemed PDB isn’t important in the implementation of the country’s 2020 development plan,” said Prof Rwegasira. “He is a new president has his way of doing things.”

When the BRN was approved by the Cabinet in 2012, it identified six priority sectors, known as the National Key Priority Areas (NKRAs), which are; Agriculture, Education, Energy, Resource Mobilisation, Transport and Water.