Q&A – 6 May 2013

Govt officials are always late

I have been to Tanzania five times in the past two years and every time I come visit a permanent secretary or deputies of Ministers we end up waiting for hours to see them. There is no sense of apology and it beats me why they cannot manage their time properly. Such time wastage is costing this country millions of dollars every day. Had this happened once or twice it would be understandable, but this seems to be the order of the day here. No public official seems to have respect for time. Our company has spent thousands of additional dollars on me as I have always have to extend my stay in Tanzania. Recently one of us had to go all the way to Dodoma to meet a certain Minister only to be told by his deputy that the previous night the Minister had travelled back to Dar for some “official” duties. A phone call from him for us to cancel our trip would have saved us all the funds we spent going all the way to Dodoma. Please guide on what I should do? Is there no guideline on this? How and to whom can I address this?
RR, Dar

The Public Service Management (PSM) has a code called Code of Ethics and Conduct for the Public service made by the Minister of State, President’s Office Public Service Management under the Authority of Section 34 of the Public Service Act, 2002 and Regulations 65(1) of the Public Service Regulations, 2003.

The code clearly provides for the following: pursuit of excellence in service, practice meritocratic principles in service delivery, execute duties and assigned responsibilities with maximum standards and within required time, unless otherwise authorized, public servants to use official time in an honest way to fullfill official responsibilities and shall not use official time for their private activities or leisure.

From the above you can see that the law has provided that a public official must perform his duties at a certain standard and taking into account meritocratic principles. Hence not keeping time is surely in breach of the law and you can either decide to formally lodge your complaint with the superiors of the persons you were to meet, or with the Minister responsible for Public Services Management.

We agree with you that not keeping time or managing time is a bad impression that is created by officials. In fact in some countries time keeping is crucial and even a five minute delay comes with an apology. Your lawyers can guide you further.

Threaten to kill

I was sipping my beer at a bar when the bar owner started irritating me with questions. He kept on asking me about my personal life especially my wife, where she was and what she did. This irritated me and since I had had a few beers too many, I threatened to kill him. He recorded that on his phone, reported me to the police and I was taken into custody. I am now in Court charged with threatening to kill someone- my lawyer says so that I can quickly sort the matter, I should plead guilty as it is a minor offence. I have heard many stories about people pleading guilty in Tanzania and ending up in jail. Please guide me.
IU, Mtwara

Next time you’re sipping your beer you should be careful. The offence you are charged with is captured under the penal code which reads as follows: Any person who (a) with intent to intimidate or annoy any person, threatens to injure, assault, shoot at or kill any person or to burn, destroy or damage any property; or (b) with intent to alarm any person discharges a fi rearm or commits another breach of the peace, is guilty of a misdemeanor and is liable to imprisonment for one year. If the offence is committed at night the offender is liable to imprisonment for two years.

From the above, clearly if you plead guilty you will go to jail for atleast one year. There is no option of a fine and hence your lawyer’s thinking of trying to sort the matter expeditiously may land you in jail. You might want to discuss the above provision of the law with him before attempting to change your plea; unless of course your interpretation of sorting this quickly is spending atleast a year in jail.

TRA website misleading

I have relied upon the Income Tax Act on the TRA website to enter into a multibillion shilling transaction. Shockingly two of the three provisions I relied upon have been changed in the last 12 months. Why is the TRA website not properly updated and what can I do now that I have relied upon it? Can I sue TRA? One TRA official said that if it is a mistake of TRA, they will respect what is on the website. Please guide me as this is really causing me uneasiness.
IK, Dar

A mistake on a TRA website cannot be used to change the law. For example, if an income tax rate in the TRA’s website’s Income Tax Act is mentioned as 25% whilst in effect it is 30%, the law will not change because of the TRA website error.

If you were entering into this multi billion shilling transaction, the least you could have done is appointed a tax consultant.

Your failure to do so also resulted in this potential liability. We doubt that an error on the TRA website would result in a successful claim against TRA- however your lawyers can guide you further. It is also recommended that you bring this to TRAs attention formally and await response from them.

Indeed after reading your question we also checked the Income Tax Act that appears online on the TRA website and there are a number of old provisions that appear there. This is indeed quite embarrassing to say the least. Hopefully your letter to TRA will assist TRA to take care of this- it is very likely unintentional.