AS President Samia Suluhu Hassan marks two years in office, Tanzania Standard Newspapers Limited (TSN) has a reason to smile following allocation of a multi-billion budget for mega investments including the installation of state of art printing plant.
The budget allocated to the company- the publisher of the Daily News, Sunday News, HabariLEO and the On-line edition, involved the purchase of a high-speed printing plant and the construction of the plant building.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Infrastructure Development has commended the government for such huge investments in the state-owned printing media company.
Speaking yesterday after receiving the brief report of various institutions under the Ministry of Information, Communication and Information Technology, the Committee’s Chairman, Mr Seleman Kakoso instructed TSN to use such investments to operate commercially.
“We commend the government for this multibillion investment in TSN, this printing plant is going to be very productive in printing business in the country as well as making the state-owned printing media company a centre for printing … fortunately even our neighbouring countries do not have a plant like this,” he said.
Mr Kakoso urged TSN management to ensure they market their products to make the plant more productive and the company to operate commercially.
“Get out of the office, market your work and stop relying on subsidies from the government…use this plant to run the company commercially, the government has already done its part, your responsibility is to take care of the plant and find markets so that the organization can run itself commercially,” Mr Kakoso said.
Moreover, Mr Kakoso urged the government to ensure the institutions under the ministry are paid their long-term debts so that they can manage to operate commercially.
In related development, Mr Kakoso commended the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) for making a great revolution in regulating communication issues in the country by purchasing the Telecommunications Traffic Monitoring System (TTMS).
According to him, the system was aimed at monitoring the quality of the service provided by mobile telecom companies in Tanzania as well as controlling tax revenues.
Equally, the Committee’s Chairman also congratulated the regulatory authority for selling more frequencies worth around 400 bn/- in the last financial year.
For his part, the minister for the docket, Mr Nape Nnauye pledged to work on the committee’s requests, while stressing that the presence of the ministry is one of the fruits of the two years reign of President Samia in leadership.