News Africa Extended

News Africa Extended

'Ghost workers' removed from Tanzania’s payroll

Posted: 16 May 2016 01:12 PM PDT

A nationwide audit conducted in Tanzania discovered that fraudulent activities is costing the government over $2m.

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Kampala - Tanzania has removed more than 10,000 “ghost workers” from its public sector payroll after a nationwide audit found their fraud cost the government over $2 million (4.3 billion Tanzanian Shillings) a month, the prime minister's office has said.

Government officials say the payroll audit is continuing and more non-existent workers are expected to be found.

“We will identify those behind this payroll fraud and take them to court ... the fight against corruption is top priority for the government,” Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa was quoted as saying in the statement issued late on Sunday.

Purging the “ghost workers” from government payrolls would save more than $2.06m (4.5 bn TZS) a month, the statement said.

Reformist President John Magufuli ordered the national audit in March as part of a wider corruption crackdown.

Businesses have long said corruption and government inefficiency were major obstacles to investing in Tanzania, which ranked 117 out of 168 countries in Transparency International's 2015 index of least corrupt countries. No.1 is deemed the least corrupt.

Elected last October, Magufuli has already dismissed several senior officials, including the head of the government's anti-graft body, the country's top tax chief, a senior rail official and the head of the country's port authority.

Tanzania spends over $260 million (570.6bn TZS) per month to pay salaries of its civil servants, but the government believes the public wage bill is bloated by thousands of phantom staff.

The country has over 550 000 civil servants in central and local government authorities.

Reuters

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Museveni orders Besigye ‘escape’ probe

Posted: 16 May 2016 09:47 AM PDT

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has ordered an investigation into how opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye escaped house arrest prior to Museveni’s inauguration.

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Kampala – Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Monday ordered an investigation into how opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye escaped house arrest prior to Museveni’s Thursday inauguration.

Besigye’s dramatic escape last Wednesday from his home just outside Kampala, despite it being under tight military siege, preceded his umpteenth arrest in downtown Kampala as his followers thronged his car prompting riot police to disperse the crowds with clubs and teargas.

Following the escape Museveni ordered police chief Gen Kale Kayihura to investigate whether some of his top officers were involved in allowing the dramatic escape.

“Insider sources said the investigating team will include officers from the presidential guard unit called the Special Forces Command (SFC) and some officers from the Police Professional Standards Unit (PSU). The team has less than two weeks to report its findings,” reported The Observer.

More than 20 police officers deployed to guard the home of former presidential guard were arrested as part of the investigation

Following his arrest Besigye was flown to Moroto central government prison in north-eastern Uganda, where he had remained incarcerated for four days before being transferred to Luzira Prison in Kampala.

The former presidential candidate is now being charged with treason.

“It is the second time that Besigye has been charged with treason – first in 2005 ahead of the 2006 presidential elections and now in 2016 after the February 18 general elections,” reported the Monitor.

Police spokesperson Fred Enanga said an investigation team was assembling evidence in relation to disobedience of an interim court order that had barred Besigye and members of his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) from holding activities under the defiance campaign.

The FDC also held a “counter inauguration” simultaneously as Museveni was being sworn in while Besigye released a statement last Tuesday calling for a “people’s government” to be formed in place of Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

African News Agency

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Libya wants UN to revoke weapons ban

Posted: 16 May 2016 09:05 AM PDT

Libyans will be calling for the lifting of the UN arms embargo at the Libya summit, so that its new presidential guard will be fully armed and equipped.

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Kampala - Libyans will be calling for the lifting of the UN arms embargo at the Libya summit in Vienna on Monday so that its new presidential guard will be fully armed and equipped.

Simultaneously, however, Libya's internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) will ask for a strict embargo on any sales of weapons to forces outside the GNA.

Several groups in Libya are vying for control of the country, claiming they are the legitimate government, with a minority in parliament refusing to recognise the authority of the GNA.

The Libya Herald reported that a leaked draft of a document calling for the lifting of the arms embargo will be presented at the Summit, which will be jointly chaired by Italy's Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

In the six-point document, Libya's Presidential Council (PC) asserts its full control over the country's military.

“The council insists that, under the Libyan Political Agreement, it is the supreme commander of the armed forces,” reported the Herald.

The PC also calls for all Libyan forces to unite under its authority, most particularly in the face of the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist groups.

The PC added that it wanted to work with the GNA to tackle criminal organisations including those involved in smuggling and human trafficking.

The document further praised the courage of those House of Representatives members who are backing the GNA.

Meanwhile, ahead of Monday's Summit, Libya's Prime Minister-designate Fayez Serraj has accused the international community of abandoning the troubled north African country after toppling former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

In an article written for the UK's Daily Telegraph, Fayez said that the outside world has responsibilities toward Libya, but insisted that these do not involve putting boots on the ground to defeat IS.

That, he said, would be done by Libyans alone. But the country needed the training and support of the international community. In particular, it required the lifting of the UN arms embargo.

African News Agency

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Mugabe becomes a “grandpa” at 92

Posted: 16 May 2016 08:10 AM PDT

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, the world's oldest head of state at 92, has become a first-time grandfather.

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Harare - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, the world's oldest head of state at 92, has become a first-time grandfather as he confirmed that his daughter had given birth to a baby boy in mid-April, state media reported Monday.

Even though the news of Mugabe becoming grandpa leaked a few weeks ago, there had been no official confirmation from the first family.

Mugabe, who visited his maternal uncles in Masvingo Province over the weekend, said that the child was still in a Far East country, presumably Singapore, where it was born, accompanied by the 26-year-old mother Bona and First Lady Grace Mugabe. They are expected to return home, bringing the baby to his grandpa, in mid-May.

“The doctors said he should only travel by air after turning a month old, so they are due to arrive back home this month around 16 or 17,” he said.

At the weekend's event, Mugabe chronicled his history from early childhood days when he used to herd cattle with the other boys of his age and expressed gratitude to his uncle for fending for him and sending him to school until he became a teacher, according to the Herald newspaper. On a light note, Mugabe says his grandson can herd his cattle after growing up.

Bona was the oldest child Mugabe had with Grace, a former typist for the president's office. Mugabe's first wife, Ghanaian Sally Mugabe died of illness in 1992. They had only one child who died from malaria in 1963 at the tender age of two.

Mugabe had once revealed in a television interview that Sally understood his relations with Grace because she could give him offspring.

Mugabe and Grace eventually married in 1996 and had three children. Bona married Zimbabwean pilot Simba Chikore in 2014 while her two younger brothers had just entered their twenties.

Bona attended tertiary education in Hong Kong and Singapore. Mugabe had earlier explained that his daughter chose a Far East country to give birth but not Zimbabwe because she knew the doctors there.

Xinhua

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