THE Dar es Salaam City Council (DCC) plans to establish business people and tax payers’ database from Friday this week.
“City does not have a database to enable them to know the number of taxpayers and who is entitled to pay what, thus creating loopholes for theft and others hide and mislead the council’s revenue,” DCC Director, Mr Jomaary Satura told ‘Daily News’ over the weekend adding that this will be a two weeks exercise.
Mr Satura said the Dar es Salaam city has 36 Wards and 159 streets, so it becomes difficult for the employees from finance and business department to monitor all areas without having their information.
“Let’s say we cannot trace Chanika or Zingiziwa and all the places where there are shops. There must be data to know who has paid and who has not,” said Mr Satura adding that it will also reduce corruption loopholes for unscrupulous councillors and business people.
He said that in line with the database, the staff will also have information on the development of the relevant area so that the council can deliver the necessary development such as infrastructure and other community services.
The city of Dar es Salaam is different in terms of environment and development in our wards, so the information will be used to make it possible to know whether a certain area needs road infrastructure or a clinic/hospital, market, football fields, for the people to depend on the need.
He said that with the presence of such information, fake licences and receipts will no longer exist because the system will access their information.
The director said the area that provides the large income is the licence and service levy of which information of business people is needed.
He said the city planned to collect 89bn/- in 2023/24 from 81.5b/- in 2022/23 from the internal sources.
Moreover, Mr Satura said with the database the city will be able to collect more than 100bn/- to the set target in 2023/2024.
“The surplus collection from the target will be used in the implementation of development projects which include construction of modern markets, road infrastructure as well as other social services,” Mr Satura said.
He said in the 2022/2023 fiscal year they were assigned to collect 81bn/- and in 2023/24 they are assigned to collect 89bn/- but they want to increase it to more than 100bn/- to implement development projects.
The Government Communication Officer, Dar City, Ms Tabu Shaibu, said the council’s aim of establishing a database is to be able to provide social services in their areas.
“You can’t lead to development where you don’t have information or data. Therefore, we ask for the cooperation of business people and citizens in general so that we can know people’s needs that will help us lead to rapid development.