By XINHUA

More by this Author

A senior Tanzanian government official told the parliament on Monday that 4,160 public servants out of 9,900 who the government sacked in 2017 over fake academic credentials have been reinstated.

Mary Mwanjelwa, the Deputy Minister of State in the President's Office responsible for Public Service and Good Governance, said the 4,160 public servants were recalled after it was established that they were wrongly sacked.

Mwanjelwa told the House in the capital Dodoma that the decision to recall the public servants and reinstate them on the public payroll system came after the government received complaints from them and other sources over unfair treatment when verifying the academic credentials.

"We made a close follow-up over the matter, and we found that 4,160 servants were removed from the payroll system by error," said the official. "Some 3,057 civil servants out of that number were employed at the village and ward levels," Mwanjelwa said in her response to a question by Musoma Urban Member of Parliament, Vedastus Manyinyi.

In April 2017, Tanzanian President John Magufuli ordered the immediate dismissal of more than 9,900 civil servants after a nationwide verification of academic credentials uncovered workers with forged school and college certificates.

The crackdown on fake degree holders came after another purge launched in March 2016 discovered more than 19,700 "ghost workers" on the country's public sector payroll.  Tanzania spends more than USD $260 million per month to pay civil servants' salaries. The government believes the public wage bill was bloated, with more than 550,000 civil servants at national and local levels.