TUCTA: is it brain game and brain and goofing?

For those that goofed to have taken the threat by Trade Union Congress of Tanzania (TUCTA) to take to streets seriously, are likely to be chary about the whole a-dime-a-dozen business of pressing the authorities to increase workers’ salaries and benefits shall this time this be foiled. As the situation seems, workers and those dreaming about all this side shows should get ready to stay put shall they be marginalized or any attempts made to silence them. Their boss Nestory Ngulla has already proved to be a puppet-cum-traitor.


We’re told they would take to stage a boycott on Monday 25 August 2008. Now the secret is openly open that there will be no sit-in whatsoever thanks to the conspiracy by Ngulla and Jakaya Kikwete. What will workers do thanks to what happened vis a vis Monday's sit-in?

For long, TUCTA has been issuing threats almost every year to no avail. Some people think: there is something fishy going on in the upper echelons of power and TUCTA shall worker don’t get what they ‘deserve’.Will it be sheer ignorance to smell a rat in the whole matter? Why doesn’t TUCTA swallow itself whole and tell us what’s up in lieu of ballyhoos and hoo-ha? Ngulla please be serious this time. And you should for the sake of our well being and your integrity. You may be serious.

But without delivering, your seriousness will be as good as nothing sir.Shall matters pertaining workers’ rights remain as stagnant and moribund as they’re, chances are there will be assumptions -be they wrong or right- that there is a sell-out.What’s indeed going on between the government and TUCTA? Workers need to ask and know shall they truly contemplate about doing away from this longtime and chronic anathema.

The government need to know. This time things may take another turn. Shall this be, our sick economy will be badly affected.What makes matters worse is the fact that while the authorities are issuing threats to thwart any demonstrations, they are sitting on grand corruption that affects the general public! What does deserve heavy hand between exercising one’s rights and sitting on corruption shall we be realistic? Why should we always be on nadir?Either ignorantly or knowingly, workers have put their hope on the wrong horse so to speak.


But as the things go, political manipulation is likely to scuttle their solidarity. Do workers know this really? If they do, then, will they allow themselves to be used and abused this way?What adds insults to injuries is the fact that the authorities is relying on unnecessary police muscles to curb and thwart demonstrations as if the same police people are not workers! This is a problem not a solution.Workers’ rights are not a political or discretionary matter so as to be treated with abracadabra sort of things. Their rights are truly theirs not government-given hocus pocus.
They deserve them the way they meet their obligation on top of dully discharging their duties. This is but a two-way traffic. They fulfill their responsibility and the authorities, the same way, must fulfill theirs but not this going on shill shall stance.


If workers really want to achieve their goals, they’ve to make sure: they condemn the authorities for tampering with their constitutional rights to boycott and expressing their views freely and fearlessly. All proscriptions and strings attached to their right to take to exercise their right should be crumbled down before doing anything. And they should state categorically that the imbroglio will go on until when justice seen being done.


What I’ve never understood is this. Sometimes, it takes the authorities many months and sometimes years of feet dragging to lay hands on corrupt elements that have been implicated directly to stealing from the public. But when it comes to thwart workers rights, it is just the matter of urgency! Will we be able to advance of sick economy with such negligence and double standards really?

I stand to be corrected. But isn’t this systemic corruption that gears us to trump on workers’ rights?Doesn’t this bulimia forcing workers to steal from our institutions as a way of revenging for not being given their rights? In this brain and blame games who is the loser and who is the gainer? Indeed this is corruption in itself shall we face it point blank.Why should workers’ rights depend on politicians who in essence are not workers but shop talkers?


Do authorities know that humiliating workers is nothing but discouraging them so as to force them to silently embark on sit-in pretending they are working? Mwenye akili atie akilini if indeed we want to deliver this country from the miseries it is in. And one way of doing so is to give the workers their rights.


TUCTA, is it brain and blame games and goofing or facing the real situation? Mark my words. We need a permanent solution to this problem. Therefore this encounter must be for ever not just a single day side show. Will this be? Time will surely tell. Indeed it time to unravel the mystery of the conspiracy between Kikwete and Ngulla.