'This is why salary increment was insignificant', say analysts

Dar es Salaam. As the government meets with Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (Tucta) representatives today to discuss complaints about new public sector salaries, analysts say workers should at least be happy with their employer’s goodwill gesture.

Those who spoke to The Citizen yesterday said complaints that employees have not received what they expected largely stem from the fact that salaries were this year raised for the first time in seven years. This explains the desire for much more than what was actually deposited in workers’ accounts as their July 2022 wages.

“It’s true that some saw an increment of only Sh20,000, but their worries are largely due to the fact that they previously had not had a salary increase for about seven years. Had salaries been increased annually during that period, we could now be talking of a total increase of about Sh140,000 in seven years,” said a source who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter. With salaries having not been raised for seven years, and considering the fact that the government still has a number of other pressing issues to attend to – including maintaining the tempo of improving Tanzania’s infrastructure while simultaneously contending with inflation due to the war in Ukraine – analysts say it was difficult for public servants to get more than what they received.

The Public Service Management and Good Governance permanent secretary, Dr Laurean Ndumbaro, was on Sunday quoted saying salary raises are meant to reduce the gap between those who are highly paid and those in the minimum wage category.

“Salary increases are not uniform across the board. The higher the salary, the lower the increase percentage because the government’s goal is to elevate those in the minimum wage category. As you do so, the percentage rise for those with higher salaries goes down correspondingly,” he said.

The government, which expects to collect a total of Sh28.018 trillion domestically to partly finance its Sh41.48 trillion budget for 2022/23, is expected to spend a staggering Sh9.83 trillion on salaries alone in the current financial year.

That notwithstanding, a total of Sh15 trillion will be required to finance development projects.

The anonymous source said it was thus absurd for anybody to expect that the salaries of all workers would have been increased by 23.3 percent, irrespective of their wage scales.

“So if you put all these issues together, there is no way the government could have increased salaries by a constant percentage for all workers. It’s a matter of understanding and being thankful that the government has finally started to effect salary rises, and hope that the tempo is maintained,” the source said.

In May, President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced a minimum salary increase of 23.3 percent for public servants

President Hassan’s predecessor, the late John Magufuli, did not raise salaries during the six years he was in office.

As has been the case, those on the lower end of the scale received double-digit increases while those on the upper end got single-digit raises.

Former Tucta secretary-general Nicholaus Mgaya told The Citizen that what has happened is normal insofar as salary increases are concerned, noting that people need to be educated whenever the government announces salary adjustments so that they do not harbour the wrong notions.

“The fact is that in Tanzania, our salary increase policy is based on the approach of elevating minimum-wage workers. While those with high salaries also need an increase, care must be taken to make sure that the gap between them is minimised,” he said.

Mr Mgaya said the government’s decision to finally increase salaries after seven years deserves to be commended.

He, however, noted that as workers were still in the dark with regard to how the increases were actually calculated, it was up to the government and trade unions to provide the answers.

“It’s a matter of making clarifications. People need to understand how the gradual computation is done and from that 23 percent, what comes at the end,” Mr Mgaya said.

Meanwhile, Tucta secretary-general Hery Mkunda said they hope that a detailed explanation will be provided after their meeting with the government today.

“We are trying to get a clearer picture on how the computation has done, and discuss the way forward because we are trying to create a win-win situation,” he said.

Mr Mkunda said Tucta is tasked with finding solutions to different challenges, and one of their foremost tools was discussions.