The failure to use local consultants was a ‘Betrayal’ according to Robert Rweyemamu writing in the January 18th issue of Dar es Salaam’s Business Times. The article began by stating that behind every successful project there is always a successful consultant. ‘Yes, consultants are a brand of businessmen who seem to be indispensable in every walk of life’. ‘Occupying a place of dominance in the field of consultancy in Tanzania is the Tanzania Industrial Studies and Consultancy Organisation, otherwise known as TISCO. It was established under Act No 2 of 1976. It is an interesting piece of legislation. On the one hand it gives TISCO’ s big wigs the power to monitor and vet employment of local and foreign consultants in the country ….. On the other hand dear TISCO does not seem to have been vested with enough professional clout or technical vim and vigour to be able to limit the influx of foreign consultants into the country or to keep the clamour for foreign consultancy under control …. the original legislation .. . created TISCO mainly to slash our overdependence on foreign expertise in the running of our (wobbling) economy …. Yet our ‘banana republic’ coughs out nearly 300 million yankee dollars a year paying for consultancy services … a good chunk of our export earnings’.

The Managing Director of M/S Iramba Management and Industrial Services Ltd. Dar es Salaam, Hr Lawrence Mmasi, recently made scathing attack on government leaders’ neglect and/or failure to give sufficient support to the local consultancy industry. “It is a betrayal of the taxpayer’s interests to throw overboard local people trained at such a high cost” he said. “Consultancy has not been seen as an important productive or service sector. On the part of donors there is no serious goodwill to support local consultancy”.