Tanzanian president warns TRL

[John Ashworth]

TANZANIAN PREMIER WARNS TRL
Railways Africa
Friday, 14 November 2008

Tanzania Railways Limited (TRL), the concessionaire running the lines of Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC), has not paid employees their promised increments “for several months”, according to questions raised in parliament. The allegation was reported by Faraja Jube, writing in The Citizen (published in Dar-es-Salaam). Responding, Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said TRL should remember that it has contractual obligations to fulfil and that the government is not its financier. He was quoted saying: “We are working on the matter in order to ensure that we should in the future do away with dilly-dallying by irresponsible investors. By August this year, the government had fulfilled its earlier promise to pay salary increments for railway workers. But the matter has come up again."

The government has already intervened twice, Jube noted, giving the company money to settle the workers' dues, to prevent a workers' strike