Public service hit by salary crisis

SUNDAY VISION

Districts are mounting pressure on the public service ministry to sort out payroll problems that have been causing hundreds of civil servants to miss their salaries.

Some civil servants have complained of getting paid less than what they expected, while others had their names missing from the payroll. On the other hand, some have found their salary accounts credited with more money than they expected and they were asked to pay back.

Personnel officials at the district level complain that this problem has persisted since early last year. They have been discussing the issue on their Google Group, where they share email correspondences between them and public service ministry officials.

As the old cases get resolved, new ones emerge. “The problem has been changing from pay slips, staff ceiling, changes of the payroll system, and now to air cash,” one of the personnel officers wrote in an email shared on their Google Group.

In February, a total of 439 public servants missed their salaries, according to official figures from the public service ministry.

The assistant commissioner in charge of the payroll, Savia Mugwanya, said in a letter to districts that those who missed their February salaries had been registered and would be paid in arrears by end of March.

On Thursday, Jonas Tumwine, the ministry’s spokesperson, told Sunday Vision that all public servants’ salaries for March had been disbursed, including the arrears for those who had not received salaries for the previous months.

“We have worked round the clock to get the money to pay them. We want them to enjoy their Easter,” Tumwine said.

But a number of the public servants Sunday Vision talked to by Friday said they had not received the salaries on their accounts. “When the money is put in the account, I usually receive a notification from Centenary Bank on my phone but I have not,” Gizamba Hamza, an instructor at a Government technical college in Tororo said.

Patrick Oduku, the head teacher of Bubulo SS in Manafwa, told Sunday Vision that following frequent anomalies, some of his teachers have lost most morale. Out of the 35 teachers in the school, only five were spared from the salary anomalies.

“Some of our teachers commute from as far as Soroti because we do not have housing for them at school. Others are servicing loans. The ministry is against absenteeism, but how do you control a hungry teacher?” Patrick Oduku said.

Mary Gorretti Sendyona, the assistant commissioner human resources management at the public service ministry, blamed the salary problem on the Integrated Personnel Payroll System, which she said encountered technical problems.

She called for calm as the problem gets resolved.

The district personnel officials are now demanding for regional desks at the ministry headquarters, saying it beats the current structure and the ministry is overwhelmed by the large number of salary complaints coming from the districts.

Consequently, even those ministry officials who are normally helpful have become too busy to handle workers’ complaints, the personnel officers state.

The personnel officers also want the ministry to explain why they stopped sending pay slips to districts, saying without the pay slips, they cannot effectively monitor the payroll.

“We cannot establish how much was paid to our staff, yet we are supposed to make reports. We cannot establish the deduction codes in case of any complaint,” one of the personnel officers said.

(Compiled by John Semakula, John Masaba & Moses Mulondo)