New administrative areas can be a burden, but they enliven spirits

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said when closing the latest meeting of the legislature that new administrative areas are to be created after the national population and housing census set for next August. It is a rather daunting prospect at various areas, not least at the Treasury - as adding new areas can be real headache.

Targeted areas are chiefly new regions, districts and parliamentary constituencies, below which there are scores of other elevations, for instance wards becoming districts and ‘hamlets’ becoming wards, as this is one of the usual outcomes of a population and housing census. The next such exercise is expected to provide the government with an expanded and updated database for implementation of development plans – and thus the rationale of setting up new administrative and representative areas. It isn’t an objective that can attract controversy, as actually there is more such pressure on the ground than government can meet.

An example is the continuing low level debate on whether Chato district ought to be elevated to a region, which raises eyebrows from most concerned quarters, but for that idea to have reached the level it now sounds, it ought to have generated a lot of passion, and expectation, already. As the fifth phase president the late Dr John Magufuli had sort of approached the idea positively, those in that campaign trust that the current authorities will follow it up as part of elevation and honouring of his endeavors. Nothing wrong with that, but as no decision had been made as yet, sorting it out presumes that standards will be followed.

Special Seats MP Alexia Kamguna had aired the view, during the premier’s impromptu questions and answers session on Thursday, on the need for the government to establish new administrative areas in Tabora and Morogoro regions to facilitate better provision of social services. This is the standard approach, of lessening administrative burdens for people of specific areas, where the costs involved aren’t raised. And behind such appeals lie plenty of local contentions, not to say animosities, smothered by elevation of a locality to a higher status, no longer sitting with the rival locality in a ward, district, region.

An even more formidable matter is the creation of electoral constituencies, which plays a big part in the havoc arising from contentions of tribal and clan dimensions, though fortunately Tanzania hasn’t had as much of those conflicts as is the case elsewhere. Still they have been more than intense where they occur, and in Tarime district the fourth phase government had to create a special police zone to contain cattle raiding and related causes of fighting. Something was stirred up in the Rufiji-Kibiti zone during the fifth phase, and draconian measures had to be put in place to eradicate the pressures, not let spread a wild fire.

The premier said, inter alia, that the government is aware of administrative challenges in the provision of social services in certain regions, citing Tabora, Morogoro and Tanga. Chances are that virtually all regions face such challenges and no accord is easy as to which are prioritised. The census can help out so that everyone, especially MPs, know what criteria were used and why, to create new administrative areas.