Tour guides’ pay, recruitment criteria will impede efficiency

Natural Resources and Tourism deputy minister Mary Masanja made remarks to this effect in the National Assembly earlier this.

She was responding to a question from Vunjo legislator Dr Charles Kimei, who raised concerns that some operators did not abide by laid down employment and remuneration guidelines.

Tracking pay for Kilimanjaro tour guides has been in the air for some years, and is taking up greater formalisation as it isn’t apparently a matter of reaching such agreements but observing or enforcing them.

The government is demanding that tour operators make sure all the people they hire or otherwise deploy to serve tourists climbing the mountain are paid in accordance with set guidelines.

This refers to the 2015 guidelines on tour operators, where a tour guide is supposed to be paid $20 per day, equivalent to at least 40,000/-, a chef’s pay pegged at $15 (not less than 30,000/-) and porters $10 (around 20,000/-) per day.

It appears that this payment schedule is only scrappily observed, with a lot of hesitation in how employers meet these guidelines.

While it isn’t possible here to list out the pros and cons of arguments by both sides, there are preliminary problems with that schedule, for instance whether this is indicative pay or capping levels.

If the pay is indicative, it means that it is minimal and thus employers will have to pay higher for longer-serving porters and other categories to avoid unhealthy flows of labour fuelled by competition between service providers.

If on the other hand the payment levels are caps, it means the porters and others can’t demand greater pay.

When specific guidelines point at exactly what a person should be paid, that means all those in that category will be paid the same way, which is a non-starter.

In that sense, the guidelines are meant to be capping to employers and are intended to be indicative for employees, with the MP seemingly putting up a case for those still obtaining less than that indicative payment.

The question that comes up is whether the conditions were the same in 2015 as at present, especially in the flow of tourists and competitiveness among service providers.

Payment is often pegged to business turnover, and it is uncertain how such a criterion can be applied today. Is it yet time for ‘business as usual’ in wage demands in tourism?

The legislator also wanted the government to put in place procedures requiring tour operators to give priority to youths residing in the villages near Mount Kilimanjaro for such jobs.

He said very few of them secure jobs from tour operators but did not give reasons. But surely, we should not reach a point where service providers are directed who to employ and what to pay them.

Should such job opportunities be turned into a right for particular people – and at given terms and conditions – the sector would find it hard maintaining competitiveness and efficiency. Some compromise would prove invaluable to all parties concerned