AfricaPress-Tanzania: AGE is gold (revered) that is why there is a wise saying from elders that borrowing is a wedding and paying back is regret with gloom.
Precisely to drive this home, recently President John Magufuli while gracing the Law Day celebration in Dodoma directed the Judiciary to speed up listening to cases, where some bank loan defaulters are dillydallying or not willing to pay the financial institutions, what they ‘loyally’ begged and given, only to resort to the game of cat and mouse in court corridors.
It is disheartening to realize that some people or institutions have excelled at borrowing and would use all sorts of sweet words and phrases pledging their loyalty that ‘with agreed clues’ they pay back, and once given the loans, they start showing their claws without realizing that once such a debt is settled fast enough, other Tanzanians would benefit.
What kind of a nation are we building with such a behaviour of being litigant and looking for weaknesses in any clause to abuse a privilege granted?
This will not be one of the ways to assist in building the economy of the country. Just like the President said: “Such acts of loan defaulters rushing to court and delays in the hearing of cases have many negative effects on the country’s economy…they reduce the capacity of banks to provide loans to other customers.
“Therefore, I reiterate my request to the Judiciary to plan and address this challenge….here I have just given an example of only four banks out of the 50 banks we have in the country demanding over 500bn/- unsettled as loans and undetermined for almost five years in various courts.”
This is not Tanzanian culture of looking for ‘smart lawyer(s) to assist one pull out of implementing one’s duty and right by refusing or dillydallying to pay back a bank loan. We should realize that loans are for our own development and the country at large.
If we (adults) continue with this behaviour of rushing to court to block a financial institution from recovering its debt, definitely we are misleading our children and the younger generation to think that banks are there to be robbed or conned for personal gains and this at the end of the day will not assist in developing one’s business and the country at large.
We should learn to honestly live within our limits and work hard to eke out a decent living, because crime will never pay. Tanzania is for us all including the financial institutions doing business within.
