Govt to pay all arrears for promoted civil servants

DODOMA: THE government will settle all salary increment arrears to promoted civil servants, the Deputy Minister of State in the President’s Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance), Mr Ridhiwani Kikwete, has said.

He made the assurance here in the Parliament, on Monday when he was responding to a supplementary question from Ms Husna Sekiboko (Special-Seats CCM), who wanted to know why still no salary increment for the promoted civil servants.

Ms Sekiboko said some of workers were promoted five years ago and had not received new salaries and wanted to hear from the government about plan to settle the arrears.

Responding, Mr Ridhiwani said the government has continued paying various arrears as the House had previously directed.

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“In the 2024/25 the government is going to pay all debts it owes the workers. We therefore direct all public employers to submit information about all workers who deserve the payments,” he said.

Initially, Ms Jesca Msambatavangu, Iringa Urban MP (CCM), asked when the government will re-arrange grades for teachers who were promoted then demoted during 2016/17 to pave the way for verification in an exercise to identify and remove ghost workers from the pay list.

Clarifying, Mr Ridhiwani explained that in 2016 the government suspended promotion to civil servants to allow verification of their public service details including academic certificates. In order to address challenges that emerged during the suspension, in 2021/22 the government started an exercise of bringing the employees back to their positions through different ways.

Therefore, from the year 2021/22 up to now a total of 375,904 civil servants have been promoted including 85,471 who were affected by the verification exercise.

Again, in this current fiscal year, the government expects to promote a total of 81,503 civil servants including those who were demoted during the verification exercise.