Uda vehicles
In Summary
In an exclusive interview with The Citizen on
Saturday, his lordship mayor Dr Didas Masaburi, said that at last week’s
extraordinary full council meeting, the Dar es Salaam City Council
reached the decision by following all procedures.
Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam City Council (DCC)
has pulled out of the troubled Shirika la Usafiri Dar es Salaam (UDA) as
it’s now eying to run the Dar es Salaam Rapid Transport (DART), this
paper can authoritatively report.
In an exclusive interview with The Citizen on
Saturday, his lordship mayor Dr Didas Masaburi, said that at last week’s
extraordinary full council meeting, the Dar es Salaam City Council
reached the decision by following all procedures.
“Our meeting principally agreed to pull out of the
management and running UDA by selling all our shares, according to law,
but the market price will be the top consideration,” Dr Masaburi noted.
UDA, whose evaluation was conducted in 2009 by Dar
es Salaam-based Land & Property Consultants, has 120 permanent
employees, a fleet of 20 buses, land and buildings, office furniture,
equipment and machinery worth billions of shillings.
The mayor said among many issues that were
approved by the council’s meeting is that the investor Simon Group
should pay more for the unalocated shares at the current market price,
which according to the evaluation conducted by KPMG is sh1,618 while the
investor bought shares at sh145.
“All shareholders, Dar City Council, Treasury
registrar and Simon Group had agreed to find an independent organization
to evaluate shares and established that each share was supposed to be
sold at Sh1618,” he said.
Reached for comments yesterday, acting Treasury
registrar Mr Elias Mwakibinga said the government is also set to leave
and sell its UDA shares after the endorsement of the Cabinet.
“The government policy is to pull out from any
business….that is why we want to leave UDA. That was the reason why the
government in 1974 released about 51 per cent stake to Dar es Salaam
City Council,” Mr Mwakibinga said.
Mr Mwakibinga said when the cabinet approves that
idea of leaving UDA alone then Consolidated Holdings Corporation (CHC)
will take over the process of selling the government shares as the law
stipulates when it comes to privitising government entities.
He said the idea of selling shares also needs to
have an investor who has financial muscle. Mr Mwakibinga said the firm
needs massive investment to revive its services and meet the standards.
However, Dr Masaburi said the Dar es Salaam City
Councilors are set to meet the Parliamentary Committee on Regional
Administration and Local Government next Sunday to express their
intention to pull and out among many other issues.
“We are looking forward to meeting Dr Kigwangala’s
committee this coming Sunday to express our concern over pulling out
from UDA….there is no way we can manage to run the company which owes
about sh17 billion,” Dr Masaburi said
In his comments on Tuesday, the investor in UDA, Simon Group, Mr Robert Kisena remarked:
“Simon Group has invested billions of shilling to
enable the company run…so how could we pay for the shares? I think what
we have injected is even higher than what we should top up for the
shares we bought,” Mr Kisena said.
source: The citizen
source: The citizen