Dar es Salaam. The Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday urged the management of the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) to recover the money in allowances paid to its employees before approval.
PAC chairperson Zitto Kabwe said that TPA requested its board of directors to raise its employees’ travel allowance in 2011, and prior to the approval by the Registrar of the Treasury, they started paying the new rates of allowances.
“The Controller and Auditor General (CAG) detected that you started paying your employees the raised allowances instead of waiting for the treasury registrar’s approval, now the Committee orders you to re-collect that money and give it back to the authority (TPA),” he said.
Earlier, he told reporters that the rate was raised from Sh94,000 to Sh125,000 for other cadres, while for senior officers and directors the amount was raised from Sh270,000 to Sh500,000 for local travel.
TPA board chairman Prof Joseph Msambichaka, said that the rate was raised after the board’s approval, but while the authority was still waiting for the Treasury’s consent. “Your honour, we have heard you; we will work on it, sir,” he said.
Mr Kabwe said, “The new rates were approved on January 2 this year.
So, all payments made prior that date should be recovered even if you will deduct their salaries,” he said.
Meanwhile, the committee also ordered that the authority should account for other funds. “You spent a total of Sh6.4 billion on advertisements and publicity, but a total of Sh384 million was not accounted for. Now, you need to account for that money,” said the PAC chairman.
It was noted that Sh9.6 billion which was spent on the workers’ council, out of it a total of Sh6,786 million lacked supporting evidence on how it was spent.
The Citizen
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