By THE CITIZEN

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Dar es Salaam

President Samia Suluhu Hassan has dissolved the Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) board and the Shipping Corporation by removing its chairmen after dissatisfaction with their performance.

President Samia announced the decision on Saturday, December 4 at the launch of pier number 0 to 7 at the port of Dar es Salaam.

Prior to the announcement, President Samia described some of the shortcomings facing the authority, some of which were in the Auditor General’s (CAG) report questioning why no action has been taken to date.

The TPA board  is made up of its chairman Prof Ignas Rubaratuka and the deputy is Dr Delphine Magere. The members are Malata Pascal, Dr Jabiri Bakari, Masanja Kadogosa, Jayne Nyimbo, Engineer Ephrem Kirenga and Eric Hamissi who is the Director General of Ports.

She also called on PCCB to investigate the boards for what was going on at the port and to take action against those responsible for the financial losses mentioned in the report.

"Director, PCCB I hereby order you to take action against these people as soon as possible and if there is no report I will give you the details of what happened here," said President Samia.

She said port payment systems has for a long time been manipulated by staff which shows that cargo has been paid for at the gate yet in real sense  it is not true causing loss of revenue to the country .

She called on the anti-graft agency to come up with answers on why all this was happening yet the board and the employees involved were still in office.

She also touched on the approval of a fake tender by the Shipping Corporation, while knowing that the right criteria was not followed and the board was involved in the approval and the government only came to find out after sending people to Turkey to investigate the company.

She called on the Minister of Works and Transport to take immediate action and in case he fails, he should let her know in order to take the required steps including appointing a new minister.