Tanzania: Norwegian aid funds misused

[Bill]

Half of Norwegian aid funds misused - report

2009-04-16 16:20:51
By Guardian Reporter

A total of US$30 million (over 36bn/-) given to Tanzania as aid by the Norwegian government in the past 12 years may have been squandered through corruption and mismanagement, an independent report has revealed.

The just-released Anti-corruption Resource Centre Report entitled `Does Aid work?`, which considers the challenges to aid effectiveness in major natural resources programmes, says half of the US$60 million did not make it to the primary targets and ended up lost.

The report is authored by Erik Jansen, a senior advisor at NORAD Evaluation Department


Gurdian ya leo (17/04/09) inasema ......
Serikali imesema italipa/ itarudisha fedha zilizotolewa kama msaada na serikali ya Norway na kisha kufujwa na mafisadi fulani. Ubalozi wa Norway umesema utazitaka fedha zote kurudishwa kwani zimetumika ovyo na kinyume malengo yaliyokusudiwa. Fedha hizo ni shilingi 36 billioni zimefujwa kati ya mwaka 1996 na 2007. lakini Wizara ya Maliasili na utalii inasema fedha ambazo zinaweza kuwa zimefujwa ni kati ya shilingi 2.4 billion na si hizo (36 bil) zilizoanikwa na ubalozi wa Norway.

Maswali Magumu
Fedha za Norway zitapatikana na kurudishwa, Je serikali itapata wapi fedha za kulipia ufisadi huu?

Ikiwa serikali itapata fedha kutokana na kodi zetu, ina maana ni fedha za umma wa waTZ, Je fedha zetu sisi ndo zinafaa zaidi kulipia ufisadi ama kwa vile hazina msimamizi (Bunge halina meno)?

Je tutaendelea hadi lini kushudia upuuzi na wizi kama huu ukiendelea huku serikali ikifanya mambo kama haya na kurudisha nyuma maendeleo ya nchi na ya wananchi huku mafisadi wakiendelea kupeta wakijua hakuna wa kuwawajibisha?

Ndugu wajumbe haya ndio mambo ya serikali yenu inachota fedha zenu kufunika kombe ili mwanaharamu apite!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Yona F. Maro]

Wewe uchaguzi si umeshafika sasa hakuna epa wala nini ni vitu kama hivyo , sijui kununua mitambo ya dowans , deci sijui

 

[Fidel80]

Mitanzania bana nachoka kabisa...

 

[Mdondoaji]

Nilitaka kupost hii habari naona muungwana ameshaipost this is serious jamani rasilimali zaibiwa, misaada yaibiwa, kodi zaliwa sasa jamani hii nchi itafika kweli???? yaani siamini maprofesa 10 waliopo serikalini wanashindwa kukemea hii hali it is dangerous hadi misaada watu wanakwiba tunakoelekea si kuzuri

 

[Baba_Enock]

Wakuu,

Si tayari KAMATI imeshaundwa, kama alivyosema Waziri wa Mali (ZETU) Asili? !!!

Kwa hiyo ni "business as usual -
1.IBA
2.JULIKANA
3.ITA WAADISHI WA HABARI
4.WATANGAZIE KUUNDA TUME KUCHUNGUZI

1. IBA TENA
2. Ahaa God nachoka kabisa

 

[Bill]

Ikiwa haitatokea kuchukuliwa hatua kwa rais mwenyewe kutokana na uzembe wa usimamiaji rasilimali za nchi kama inavyoonekana kwa sasa nchi hii haitokaa ikapata maendeleo. Kila siku itakuwa tumedumisha amani na utengamano wakati wanatuibia. I hate CCM and those who put the CCM interest up front.

Kwa masilahi ya vizazi vijavyo ni lazima tuweke masilahi ya nchi mbele, hii nchi inaweza kuendeshwa hata bila kuwa na CCM. Zindukeni Wabunge mlio lala usingizi, hizo bongo zenu nani kaziroga enyi wawakilishi wetu..... angalie watu walio nyuma yenu.... mtawaweka wapi wajuuu wenu katika hali hii ya wizi mkubwa wa mali za taifa

 

[911]

Neno "Breaking News" limeanza kupoteza maana yake halisi.Hizi za kutoka magazetini sidhani kama zinastahili kuitwa BN.Nathani neno kama "ATTENTION'' could have suited much.

 

[Kikojozi]

Nilitaka kupost hii habari naona muungwana ameshaipost this is serious jamani rasilimali zaibiwa, misaada yaibiwa, kodi zaliwa sasa jamani hii nchi itafika kweli???? yaani siamini maprofesa 10 waliopo serikalini wanashindwa kukemea hii hali it is dangerous hadi misaada watu wanakwiba tunakoelekea si kuzuri

Sasa kama wenye mali (civil society) hawana habari wajanja wafanyeje?

 

[LeopoldByongje]

Wanajamiiforum Salaam. Hii ni mara ya kwanza kuchangia mada japo ni Musomaji mzuri wa Makala zinazoongelewa. Nimeona leo nichangie mada hii.

Ripoti aliyoandikwa Bw Erick ambaye alikuwa Minister Chancellor Ubalozi wa Norway, Dar Es Salaam hadi alipoachishwa kazi 2007 kuhusu ufisadi Wizara ya Maliasili ni hiyo.

Naomba muisome na kuitafakali. Tusifanye ushabiki jamani.

Wasalaam

 

[Shishye]

Nilitaka kupost hii habari naona muungwana ameshaipost this is serious jamani rasilimali zaibiwa, misaada yaibiwa, kodi zaliwa sasa jamani hii nchi itafika kweli???? yaani siamini maprofesa 10 waliopo serikalini wanashindwa kukemea hii hali it is dangerous hadi misaada watu wanakwiba tunakoelekea si kuzuri

Maprofesa hata wangekuwepo kumi mara kumi haisaidii kama walioko juu yao si waadilifu. Bora warudi mashuleni kufundisha watanzania na kwasensitaizi kuhusu madhara ya kuchagua viongozi wabovu.

Suluhu ya matatizo yote ni kuwa na kiongozi mkuu mwenye dira, msimamo na uwezo wa kuongoza nchi.

 

[BAK]

Govt promises to repay `squandered` aid funds

2009-04-17 12:15:19
By Njonanje Samwel​

The government will compensate Norway for any portion of aid funds the country has extended to Tanzania in the last 12 years confirmed to have been squandered, Natural and Tourism minister Shamsa Mwangunga said yesterday.

She added that the government and the Norwegian Embassy in Dar es Salaam have agreed to initiate talks aimed at establishing whether indeed any of the funds had been misused through corruption or otherwise mismanaged.

The minister made the remarks at a news conference in the city she called following reports published exclusively in The Guardian on Wednesday that US$30 million (over 36bn/-) in Norwegian government assistance to Tanzania had been squandered through corruption and mismanagement between 1996 and last year.

The damning claims were made in the just-released Anti-Corruption Resource Centre report entitled ?Does Aid Work??, which analyses the challenges to aid effectiveness in major natural resources programmes.

However, according to the minister, the money so squandered might be no more than the equivalent of 2.4bn/- and not the staggering amount given by the Norwegian Embassy.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian government has said it will demand back from Tanzania any aid funds extended to the country through the Norwegian Embassy and squandered by the Natural Resources and Tourism ministry as claimed in the report.

The embassy's Charge d'Affaires, Svein Baera, told The Guardian in an exclusive interview yesterday that the report was first published by a Norwegian paper.

Soon after that, our government sent queries to the Tanzanian government.

But since the (Tanzanian) government doubted the accuracy and authenticity of the information and figures in the report, it was agreed that the ministry and Norwegian officials go through the report word by word to establish whether the allegations raised were true,? he explained.

We are about to finalise this process. Once we establish that there was any amount that was mishandled, we will claim it back. This is a matter of great concern to us because it is our taxpayers? money that is at stake,? he added.

Baera was quick to note that the queries made were not part of any agenda by Norway to weaken its cordial diplomatic and other links with Tanzania.

But it is important for us to ask for a refund to ensure that our development partners have due respect for the financial and other assistance we extend to them. They must continue to use the assistance cautiously so that it benefits the majority of Tanzanians, and not end up in the hands of a few, he stated, adding that he saw little likelihood of the move impacting on the future of Norwegian aid to Tanzania.

Minister Mwangunga, who had called the news conference partly to brief journalists on the expected tour of Tanzania by the African Diaspora Heritage Trail, said the loss of the money could be due to taxation, embezzlement and failure by the relevant officials to account for the amounts spent.

In the case of taxation, she said it was quite possible that some officials at both her ministry and the Tanzania Revenue Authority were ignorant of the fact that foreign aid packages and other diplomatic consignments were not subjected to Value Added Tax (VAT) and other forms of taxation and had charged as is routinely done on all others.

I have just learnt that 1.2bn/- of the money feared misspent was paid as VAT. This is in contravention of our country?s laws which state categorically that diplomatic consignments should not be subjected to taxation, she added.

She explained that the consignments were supposed to enter Tanzania duty free and that her ministry was ?busy working to establish whether the officials connived with dishonest businesspersons in corrupt practices.

The minister noted that her ministry had discovered that some officials had defaulted on accounting for some of the aid money that had fallen into their hands, warning that disciplinary action would be taken against all culprits.

We have instructed all those who were not up to the mark in fulfilling their duties and responsibilities to return the money they have failed to account for, she pointed out.

There is no way the government or the ministry can be happy while seeing assistance from Norway and our other development partners played with by a few dishonest employees,? she added.

Elaborating, the minister said there would be no mercy and any officials proved to have taken part in the conspiracy to squander the said funds would have their services terminated.

She would not name any of the officials believed to be linked to the scandal, saying there were ?crucial issues? to be attended to first.

A report issued by evaluation department of the Norwegian Agency for International Development (Norad) in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday said the money was squandered between 1994 and 2006. It was part of funding for the Norway-financed Management of Natural Resources Programme (MNRP).

The report is by Erik Jansen, a senior advisor with the department, and says MNRP had projects in the forestry, fisheries, and wildlife sectors that were closely connected to these three divisions of the Natural Resources and Tourism ministry.

In all of the three sectors there has been pervasive corruption during the last decades. Management and staff in the Ministry, together with politicians and people from the local population, have plundered the resources and exploited the resources in a way that is not sustainable. Often this has been in collaboration with foreign investors,? writes Jansen.

Both in the fisheries and wildlife sectors, licences are allocated to investors at a price that is only a fraction of the market price. Corrupt representatives of the Government earn huge amounts of money that should have gone into the Treasury, the report states.

The development partners in Dar es Salaam recently notified the Government that the fees which the Government received from the wildlife sector were minimal. The Government only charged US$ 8,000 for hunting blocks that had a much higher market value.

The Government accepted the complaint by the development partners and increased the fees to US$ 40,000 for each block. However, many of the politicians and ministers who controlled these hunting blocks complained that the increased fees would lower their profit and therefore demanded that fees should remain at the old levels, it adds.

The report says that, if the government had charged market value for these licences, the Treasury could have collected US$20 million annually for the trawlers? licences.

It is difficult to estimate how much money the Ministry transfers to the Treasury and how much disappears due to corruption. With all the potential income from natural resources, the Government of Tanzania should have been able to manage its own natural resources without depending on funds from development partners,? notes Jansen.

Commenting on the Jansen report and the embassy?s reaction, Natural Resources and Tourism deputy minister Ezekiel Maige confirmed to The Guardian yesterday that they received the embassy?s ?query note? from the Norwegian Embassy some six months ago ?although yesterday was the first time we had the opportunity to read what was in the report ? from your paper?.

He said it was true they have started discussing the queries raised in the report ?but some information is exaggerated, with personal views appearing without response or clarification from officials at our ministry?.

As we talk, the dialogue is going on between the ministry and the embassy. We have gone through each of the items in the report and will soon come up with findings and a way forward, added the deputy minister.

 

[Petu Hapa]

Watatoa wapi hizo pesa za kurudisha!

 

[Wambugani]

Hii Wizara ya Maliasili na Utalii inatakiwa itupiwe macho hasa katika yafuatayo:-

- Kushindwa kuzuia ujangili ulioibuka karibu na Hifadhi za Taifa kama Ziwa Manyara na Tarangire

- Kuhudumia WMAs

- Kutokukusanya ushuru wa malazi katika makambi ya utalii yaliyopo maeneo ya Hifadhi

- n.k.

 

[MzalendoHalisi]

Yet watu wanasema Tz sasa inapaa!!

 

[Kwame Nkrumah]

Wanajamiiforum Salaam. Hii ni mara ya kwanza kuchangia mada japo ni Musomaji mzuri wa Makala zinazoongelewa. Nimeona leo nichangie mada hii.

Ripoti aliyoandikwa Bw Erick ambaye alikuwa Minister Chancellor Ubalozi wa Norway, Dar Es Salaam hadi alipoachishwa kazi 2007 kuhusu ufisadi Wizara ya Maliasili ni hiyo.

Naomba muisome na kuitafakali. Tusifanye ushabiki jamani.

Wasalaam

Mods, hii report by itself, ingekuwa na thread yake. Report muhimu sana. Aibu sana watu hawa wanachofanya.

 

[MzalendoHalisi]

Mods, hii report by itself, ingekuwa na thread yake. Report muhimu sana. Aibu sana watu hawa wanachofanya.

Kwame Nkrumah,

Sasa hapa ni Wiraza tu moja!! sasa fikiria wizara zote Tz maafisa wanaiba hivi..je kweli tutafika??

 

[Manta]

Extract from Mr Jensen report..... mahojiano yake na kiongozi wa project moja chini ya MNRP

Insights from one MNRP project leader

I approached the leader of one project that had received criticism in the evaluation and audit reports. I knew well after several visits to his project, and I raised a number of specific findings from the audit report. Initially he defended the project as best he could. When he realised that his answers were not convincing, he suddenly shifted his position completely and began talking frankly about the pressures he faced. This is free interpretation of what he said:

You do not understand how our government system functions. It is very different from how the Norwegian government operates. The project I am in charge of is the largest foreign-supported project in this district. We receive a fair amount of financial support from Norway each year to run our project (each of the 11 projects received US$ 100,000-200,000 each year depending on which stage they were in and what types of activities they carried out). The money we receive is spent on vehicles, petrol, repair, workshops, trips, infrastructure, purchase of consultancy services, etc. Not far from our project HQ is the centre for the district administration (Tanzania is divided into about 130 districts). The district administration is starved for funds, and 80-90 percent of the
available money is spent on salaries for the staff of the district administration, salary for teachers and for employees and officials in the health sector. The vehicles of the district administration are in poor shape and there is very little petrol available. The leaders and employees of the district administration have few opportunities to go on field trips. In the years I have been project manager for MNRP, I have been under constant pressure from the district administration to give them financial support by way of supplying petrol, lending out our project vehicles, giving financial support for field trips, etc.
Although the project I manage under MNRP is not under the jurisdiction of the district administration, the leaders of the district administration are more senior than me and can easily report negatively about the project I manage. I can be removed from my position, and they can destroy my professional career. Therefore sometimes, out of fear, I have to comply with their demands. I have to cover their expenses within the accounts of my project. However, I often fear that some of the money I give them is not only used on the activities of the district administration, but also for the personal use of the powerful officials of the district administration.

Without being asked, he continued:

"Do you think the situation I have described is different from any other MNRP project?"

I took the opportunity to ask about the nine workshops that, according to the annual plan, were to be conducted for this project. There was only two months left of the year when I asked him. The project manager looked disturbed, and said "We are going to have nine workshops this year?"

 

[BAK]

Aid funds `eaten` in allowances, vehicle purchases - report

2009-04-18 16:12:05

By Guardian Reporter​

The project support funds given by the Norwegian government to the Natural Resources and Tourism ministry were squandered on dubious sitting allowances and purchases of vehicles asw well as through other malpractices.

A financial review of five projects under Management of Natural Resources Programme, Tanzania (Tan 0092) covering 1996 and 2006 carried out by consultants Arthur Andreasen and Kailas Bhattbhatt, revealed that the unwarranted expenditure that ended in individual pockets amounted to 36bn/-.

The funds were initially offered by the royal government of Norway in support of five rural community based projects.

The report shows that the misuse occurred due to lack of accountability at different levels within the ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

``There is a lack of proper allocation of expenses to the activities, no system to trace the allocation of expenses, absence of budgetary control mechanism and payment of duties and taxes from the programme funds which is against the agreement,`` says part of the report.

It was further revealed that over 35 per cent of the received funds were unnecessarily spent on buying expensive vehicles for officers who could have performed their duties without the expensive vehicles.

``Procurement procedures are not followed for many purchases and for procuring consultancy services. Most of the consultancy services are single sourced. Salary and wages are being paid from the project funds which is against the agreement between the two countries,`` the report further details.

The discerned lines of weakness on the Coordination and Capacity Building project said allowances paid to seminar participants exceeded the number of days of the seminar.

Double expenditure by paying daily subsistence allowance to those attending seminars and paying for accommodation for participants as well.

``There is lack of proper reporting mechanism whereby approved budget in the work plan is different from the approved budget in the financial statements,`` the report explains.

Meanwhile in another project for Serengeti Regional Conservation, money realized on the sale of the project assets are not brought in to the books of the project but directly transferred to the ministry account.

The review found that the figures stated against those budgeted in the financial statements had no connection with the vouchers prepared and cash book maintained.

It was also established that 30 per cent of the total expense of the project was not supported by valid documentation.

``Totaling mistake in the cash book amounting to 20m/- was accounted as expense. In our opinion this is a probable case of fraud,`` the report reveals.

As for another project known as Bio-diversity and Human Wildlife Interface Project (TAWIRI), there were no reports for time devoted by each consultant for the project research to justify the payment of honorarium to them.

``Payment for extra-duty to employees is not supported by any overtime records to ascertain the extra time worked by each employee. In so many cases, we have observed that the project has spent the entire budget on a particular activity during a year but the planned targets have not been achieved,`` said the report.

As for the Catchments Forestry Project the report revealed that allowances were paid to the villagers attending seminars, exhibitions after three to five months from the date of the event. ``This is highly unlikely,`` the experts said in their report.

Among the recommendations given with respect to financial management was that budgetary control mechanism should be introduced.

There should be provision for budgetary change/ revision with the budget being more detailed and more realistic, giving all possible heads of expenses.

A standard format should be designed for reporting on monitoring and evaluation visits and these should be presented in annual/ bi-annual meetings. This will bring the problems and challenges into the main forum and would be easy to tackle or take a decision on, the experts said.

The experts also recommended that funds for projects be integrated within the government accounting system and the appointment of a technical and financial consultant for the programme be done on merit.

SOURCE: Guardian

 

[MzalendoHalisi]

Iunganishwe na ile ingine!

Tz sasa ina paa!! (EL)

 

[Ng'azagala]

Accountability!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sisi watanzania ni wanyenyekevu sana, na hapa kuna tatizo kubwa. ndiyo maana watu wanaiba tu no one is accountable. ooh aah tumwache tu oooh ni ndugu yetu nk.
jamani watanzania tubadilishe atitudes zetu. lazima tufike mahali watu wawe accountable kwa wananchi la sivyo hata tubadilishe viongozi hatutafanikiwa.
nguvu ya umma ni muhimu sana katika kurinda maliasili zetu