BY EDITOR
13th February 2016.
It was during the tour when the agency’s Chief Executive Officer, Magdalena Chuwa, was put to task for her failure to ensure fuel offloaded from tankers passed through oil flow meters for accurate measurement.
She was then given four hours in which to explain to the prime minister in writing why the meters stayed idle since 2012 on her orders, considering that the government had coughed up USD1.2 million_(about Sh 2.5 billion) to purchase them.
As a newspaper, we leave the rest to the government, but already the cat is out of the bag.
Thursday’s incident, of course, must have greatly shocked the prime minister after noticing that the oil flow meters had rusted owing to falling to disuse since they were installed about three years ago.Apparently, there are individuals who have been ripping huge profits from the oil business for the non-use of the meters, considering the fact that measuring the amount of imported fuel has all along been done using an unreliable ‘stick’.
The beneficiaries could be oil importers themselves as well as officials at the weights and measures agency. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to understand that oil flow meters, to a large extent, help to reduce cheating in oil measurement, which, in turn, helps to calculate the amount of tax payable to the government.
To put things in perspective, what could be happening to Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Corporation (DAWASCO) if its supplied water does not pass through any meters within our homes as we use it? The answer is simple - huge losses in terms of revenue to the corporation.
By all standards, a substantial amount of what should have been tax must have ended up in people’s pockets over all this period of time that the oil flow meters were deliberately decommissioned.
To substantiate this hypothesis, we are told that the agency (WMA) took a different stand by starting working on the metres after they received an SMS alerting them about the PM’s visit to Kurasini Oil Jetty ( KOJ) to inspect the meters.
The question is: Who sent the SMS to the agency? There is no doubt that if the government throws its weight into searching the culprit it will identify them and, probably, their link with the rot.
Thursday’s incident is a wake-up call to the central government about how rampant rot is within our ports. Oil containers have, on several occasions, been finding their way outside the port and depots without the government getting its fair share of tax due, and now the game has turned to imported oil.
As President Dr John Mafuguli reflects on his hundred days in office, he should come up with strategies to plug all tax evasion loopholes everywhere, not only at our ports. Going by his words, Tanzania is a rich nation capable of being a donor country.
The only thing we need is political will to stamp out corruption, judiciously exploit the country’s resources and work hard.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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