Dar es Salaam. The government said it was a Budget of the people, but wananchi said it was yet another financial statement they know nothing about.
Many ordinary people who talked to The Citizen on Saturday appeared to lose interest in the budget which they say has for many years failed to pull them out of poverty.
Some were did not even know that the budget had already been presented in Dodoma on Thursday.
Presenting the 2014/15 Budget in Parliament on Thursday, minister for Finance Saada Mkuya said the budget plan was in line with implementation of the Strategy for Growth and Poverty Reduction.
Ms Mkuya also said among other priorities the budget aims at bringing about economic revolution by improving social services. The Citizen on Saturday yesterday did a quick survey among ordinary people in the city to find out their hopes about the budget. Their replies were testimony that most of them have lost faith in it or they are oblivious of its importance.
Ludovick Maro, a cobbler in Tabata, said that he knew that the budget was to be read on Thursday, but he had no interest in listening to it, since it won’t bring any changes in his daily life.
“Those are issues for politicians and the learned members of society; for us in at bottom life has and will always be difficult,” he said. “I have heard that beer and cigarette prices are up; I am used to it now. We will keep on digging deep in our pockets, but we have stopped trusting them on their promises of good roads and hospitals.”
For Mabibo resident Mwasiti Mwinyi, the budget is a familiar name, but at the same time it’s a strange thing as far as its inputs and impacts in daily house hold expenses are concerned.
“So prices of all commodities rise or go down after the budget?” she asked, adding: “Then it’s a bad thing in general; for instance a kilogramme of sugar about 10 years ago was about Sh500, but it is Sh2,000 now.”
To her, “with or without the budget life is hard, and one can make it only through hard work, not waiting for government promises.”
Marta Kauli, a primary school teacher in the city, said the poor and minimum wage earners are once again at the receiving end of budget taxes.
“It has failed to find other sources of revenue…yes. Pay As You Earn (Paye) dropped, but only by one per cent, there is nothing to celebrate about. I’m finding it unrealistic when they say they aim at reducing poverty while household expenses are continuously on the rise,” she lamented.
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