Strategic renewal in TANESCO a reminder of earlier reform stint

There wasn’t much in terms of declaratory assertions or affirmations, either from incoming Energy minister January Makamba or the new board and management chiefs. It was a matter of piecing together intentions both in their appointment and the tone of declaration.

Reports rapidly said that the minister has issued directives to the TANESCO board and management to achieve targets of efficiency, profitability and good customer care. The new team was being introduced to zonal managers in Dar es Salaam, with a rather curious remark that there will be no interference from the government, asserting that this was one among the reasons for failures in achieving the company’s goals. That remark can have a bevy of implications, but as President Samia Suluhu Hassan decided to replace the minister as well as the management and board, it is not clear that political supervision is the key here?

Bad political interference may constitute in being selective of who pays power bills and who does not, a situation which brought TANESCO to the brink of privatisation during the third phase presidency, if the company can’t collect bills or place prepaid supply meters in major public institutions. This wind finally dissipated but there is a way in which history repeats itself, so it may be the case now. It is still unclear.

The government has altered the management and  overall supervision of the corporation from a public sector setting to something a bit different, which means it now has organisational reforms to carry out in order to enable the new board and management to stick to the management culture of their being hired. It quite simply means that TANESCO shares be placed on the stock exchange with a major buyer chosen by the government, stripping the corporation of its cultural drawbacks.  The size of the managerial team in each district, numerous regions or zones is an issue; most big firms don’t quite need expansive structures.

That is why the minister will have to follow up with structural changes for him to actually live up to his motto of ending political interference in how the entity is managed or in its day to day operations. One such problem he talked about was outage, that headquarters can’t even know if there is power cut in a whole area until a resident phones, and it is unclear who receives the phone and how action teams are organised. A resident would have to phone a top company official, and again he would have to care about the issue, all of which is hypothetical – and only when there is fear of political fallout do they take care.

Put graphically, a government owned company can’t operate without having to look over the shoulder as to what reactions its methods of lack of zeal are promoting, for instance at one time the late President Magufuli – who as a trained scientist could tell off ‘professionals’ without them being able to snide or chuckle that he was just a politician – why they shut down both Mtera and Kidatu dams to conduct maintenance work on both power stations. It appeared that this was designed; work could be rescheduled.