Entry Instance

HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept

{
    "id": 1059771,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1059771/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 217,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Sen. Wako",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 366,
        "legal_name": "Amos Sitswila Wako",
        "slug": "amos-wako"
    },
    "content": "The late President (Dr.) John Pombe Joseph Magufuli maybe is the only one who within five years has lifted his country from being referred to as a least developed country to a lower middle income economy. In East Africa, it was only Kenya which was the lower middle income economy. Madam Deputy Speaker, however, President (Dr.) John Pombe Joseph Magufuli within five years as a record was able to lift Tanzania from the least developed to this economy. It is hard work, my dear friends, to do that and galvanize the entire nation and the people to focus on issues of economic development. How did the late President (Dr.) John Pombe Joseph Magufuli do that? First, he renegotiated all the mining agreements. People used to say, why is it that Tanzania is the most richly endowed country with national resources more than any other country in the East African region yet Kenya, without much natural resources, has a better economy. The secret was that the mining industry and the multinationals were exploiting the minerals of Tanzania and not paying any tax whatsoever. Madam Deputy Speaker, President (Dr.) John Pombe Joseph Magufuli changed all that and they began paying taxes in billions of dollars. That move freed and made available the money to improve infrastructure. That is why in Tanzania today there are most of the infrastructures that have taken place and they are many. Whether it is roads, hospitals, universities and many others, all these have been done with their own internal resources and not from borrowed money. The late President (Dr.) John Pombe Joseph Magufuli was also very tough in negotiations. For example, when negotiating for the construction of their Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), he negotiated for far much less than the cost of the SGR that we have in Kenya. He also introduced what we call work ethic. On his first day as the President of Tanzania, he went very early in morning to the Ministry of Finance. He was shocked to learn that many people had not arrived to the offices by the time he got there. He also visited a few other offices during the first year of office and that introduced work ethic in Tanzania. Tanzania is no longer the country I knew when I was there as a student and when we used to say that these people cannot work. We used to term them as lazy people who are waiting for coconuts to fall down on the ground. Today, Tanzanians report to work on time and work very hard for the sake of the country."
}