Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Wednesday dismissed the head of the government’s anti-graft body for failing to tackle high-level corruption in east Africa’s second-biggest economy, Magufuli’s office said.<\/p>\n
Magufuli sacked Edward Hoseah, the long-serving director general of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), due to the slow pace of the fight against graft.<\/p>\n
Hoseah has led the government’s anti-graft watchdog for the past nine years and previously served as its director of investigations for almost a decade.<\/p>\n
“The president … is not satisfied with the manner in which this institution (PCCB) has been carrying out its duties to tackle corruption,” the president’s office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The president has also suspended four other senior officials of the PCCB for defying the government’s ban on foreign travel by public officials as part of austerity measures.<\/p>\n
Magufuli launched a campaign to root out corruption and inefficiency in Tanzania since his inauguration last month and has already sacked several senior officials as a sign of his determination to fight graft.<\/p>\n
Businesses have long complained that corruption is one of the main reasons for the high cost of doing business in Tanzania.<\/p>\n
The sacking comes barely a week after Magufuli dismissed the head of Tanzania’s ports authority and the top official in the transport ministry over graft and tax evasion allegations.<\/p>\n
Last month, Tanzanian authorities suspended six tax officials including the head of the revenue authority, pending an investigation into claims of graft and tax evasion.<\/p>\n
“The port and the tax authority are some of the areas where the government loses a significant amount of revenue … the president is saddened that corruption was left unchecked at these areas for such a long time,” the presidency said.<\/p>\n
The PCCB has long been criticised for failing to prosecute high-level corruption cases and Western donors have in the past suspended aid due to the slow pace in the fight against graft.<\/p>\n
The president’s office said the dismissal of the PCCB chief came after two surprise visits to Tanzania’s main port of Dar es Salaam by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa.<\/p>\n
Police are investigating the disappearance of over 2,700 shipping containers from inland container depots that serve the port that were cleared without relevant taxes being paid.
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\nBy: thestar.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tanzanian President John Magufuli on Wednesday dismissed the head of the government’s anti-graft body for failing to tackle high-level corruption in east Africa’s second-biggest economy, Magufuli’s office said. Magufuli sacked Edward Hoseah, the long-serving director general of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), due to the slow pace of the fight against graft. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":175136,"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":[38,14],"class_list":["post-175135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175135","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\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/175136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}