Africa-Press – Tanzania. KATAVI Regional Commissioner (RC) Juma Homera has directed the immediate arrest of 12 civil servants and three businesspeople for failing to pay over 34m/- being the value of construction bricks they had borrowed for building their houses.
The civil servants, who work for Mlele District Council, borrowed 34,000 construction bricks from the council.
Initially, the bricks were meant for the construction of Mlele District Hospital in Inyonga Town, but later the plan was changed after the council noticed that the bricks were substandard and thus decided to give them to the staff and others as a loan.
During his visit to the construction site, Mr Homera learnt that the officials and traders were yet to settle their debts.
“I will not tolerate any more… It is very disheartening because you were the ones who manufactured those poor quality bricks and yet you have not paid for the bricks you had taken for building your houses,” he said.
“This shows that you deliberately manufactured low quality bricks so that you could borrow them and build your houses… this is unacceptable… I direct you to refund the money. Anyone of you who will defy my directive will face legal action,” he stated.
All 12 civil servants and three traders must be held immediately,” directed the RC who was seemingly furious.
He stressed that if 34m/- had been refunded it would have helped in the purchase of aluminium materials for fitting 40 hospital windows.
However, the RC expressed his satisfaction with the ongoing construction of the district health facility, noting that it reflected value for money.
He directed Mlele District Executive Director (DED) Alexius Kagunze to supervise the construction of the project which was in final stages.
Mr Kagunze said so far 1.8bn/- which had been disbursed by the central government had been spent and the council had contributed 10m/- from its domestic sources for the construction of a maternity ward.
He explained that the project involved the construction of administration block, outpatients department (OPD), radiography unit, pharmacy unit, laundry block, laboratory unit and maternity block.
