Tanzanian President John Magufuli has revealed that he takes home a monthly salary of $4,008 as leader of the East African country. Magufuli, who was elected president in 2015 on a pledge to tackle corruption, made the disclosure during a speech broadcast live on state television last Friday.
Mr. Magufuli, who is nicknamed “the Bulldozer” for building roads in his previous post as a Cabinet minister, said, “My salary is nine million Tanzanian Shillings. I have not increased my salary and I will not increase it. My obligation is to serve Tanzanians, first. Citizens are tired of their money being stolen”.
Civil society groups have hailed the disclosure as a “step in the right direction”. Derrick Chibama, the leader of Point Blank, put it this way, “This is transparency and when you say you want to lead by example it is the right thing to do. Before, presidents never told us how much they were earning”. Observers were quick to point out that President Magufuli’s salary is a third of what former president Jakaya Kikwete was reported to be earning during his ten-year tenure as leader of East Africa’s most populous country.
But some Tanzanians think the president’s salary, which is also lower than the salaries of President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, is still too high. “The president gets everything from the government. His children’s school fees, free house and free cars. If he thinks it is a small salary or it is not enough then he is mistaken,” one taxi driver retorted in Dar-es-Salaam.
After more than two decades in politics, Mr. Magufuli has built a no-nonsense reputation as one who wants a corruption-free society. As soon as he was elected president, Magufuli, the son of a peasant farmer ordered restrictions on the foreign trips of all government officials.
As defiant as ever, the President stated last Friday, “Some board members of public organisations used to decide not to hold their board meetings in Tanzania and will go to Dubai to hold their meetings there, just so that they could pay themselves a large amount of per diems. They certainly don’t like what my government is doing now”.
Last December, the 58-year-old leader banned government officials from sending Christmas and New Year cards paid for by public funds as part of the cost-cutting measures which his government introduced.
