Air Tanzania,-Top Level Firings inspire wry response from an anonymous staff member.

Tanzania's Minister for Transport has sacked the Acting Director-General for an old favourite , alleged errors in the appointment process. It's not unlike that other long standing East African favourite,- dismissal for alleged discrepancies between claimed  and real educational qualifications. It's often difficult to determine which side is doing what with the evidence. It would be much more straightforward to just say "I can fire you,- and you're fired", but that just isn't the way.

Fortunately there are people in what remains of Air Tanzania still with enough sense of humour to put pen to paper. This one writes to the local press..................

Letters: Why firing Air Tanzania bosses is wrong decision by Minister.

To the editor:

The public has applauded the decision by the minister for Transport, Dr Harrison Mwakyembe to sack Air Tanzania’s acting director-general Paul Chizi and suspending four other top officials.

It was claimed that the airline was not performing well and most people mentioned the fact that we had no airplane as evidence of this.

It is this point I would like to address as it is what has gripped the imagination of the people. They say it is ridiculous that a national airline would be without a single plane and therefore our bosses deserve to be fired.

You are all being ignorant and missing the point- the fact that we did not have a single plane was a clever, intelligent move that ensured the brand Air Tanzania was not associated with any accidents.

People need to realise that each time you have a crash it goes on record and the airline gets a bad reputation internationally and so the safest thing to do for us was to get rid of all the planes- which brought the chances of an accident occurring to zero.

Yes, our last flight crashed in April but that was the last one and might have been necessary to ensure we achieve a zero accident record for the long term.

What your readers also fail to realise is that not having any planes meant that the company could save money. During the short period when we had no planes we managed to save a lot of money because we didn’t have to pay for things such as fuel and on flight meals.

In turn this meant the extra income could be diverted to such things as high salaries and bonuses to attract the best minds in the industry.

We were on our way to being the best airline in the world but because the minister interfered that will never be. All those who are happy that our bosses were sacked I would like you to think about that and realise the future we have lost.

Signed:   ‘Indignant staff member’

June 2012.