Tanzania’s new President John Magufuli has joined hundreds of residents in the main city Dar es Salaam to take part in a public clean-up operation.<\/p>\n
Mr Magufuli picked up rubbish from the street outside State House as part of the scheme, which he had ordered to replace independence day celebrations.<\/p>\n
The move is being seen as symbolic of the president’s promise to tackle corruption, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people across Tanzania are reported to have joined the clean-up.<\/p>\n
Last month, Mr Magufuli cancelled traditional independence day celebrations, which usually include a military parade and concert, saying it would be “shameful” to spend huge sums of money while the country was facing a serious cholera outbreak.<\/p>\n
“Let us work together to keep our country, cities, homes and workplaces clean, safe and healthy,” Mr Magufuli told a crowd of surprised onlookers as he picked up rubbish off the street, AFP news agency reports.<\/p>\n
“Tanzania has changed – this is a new Tanzania,” one resident told AFP, on a break from cleaning up the city’s public beach.<\/p>\n
Since coming to power in October, Mr Magufuli, nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his no-nonsense approach, has announced a range of cost-cutting measures, including a ban on unnecessary foreign travel by government officials.<\/p>\n
The hashtag #WhatWouldMagufuliDo, coined after the initial cancellation of festivities last month, has been trending on social media in Tanzania and across East Africa, as people come up with their own money-saving initiatives:<\/p>\n Last month, Mr Magufuli ordered the cost of a party to inaugurate the new parliament to be slashed from $100,000 (\u00a366,000) to $7,000.<\/p>\n He also sacked the head of the main state hospital after finding patients sleeping on the floor during a surprise visit to the facility.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tanzania’s new President John Magufuli has joined hundreds of residents in the main city Dar es Salaam to take part in a public clean-up operation. Mr Magufuli picked up rubbish from the street outside State House as part of the scheme, which he had ordered to replace independence day celebrations. The move is being seen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":173077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-173074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/173077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}