Cabinet secretary decries salary disparities

 By Moses Walubiri                                                        

The head of public service and secretary to cabinet, John Mitala, has waded into the simmering debate about huge salary disparities between technocrats with similar academic qualifications and responsibilities, conceding that they are disconcerting.

"A permanent secretary taking an entire year to earn what someone at Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) earns in a month? That is disturbing," Mitala said while opening a management symposium at the Uganda Management Institute (UMI) on Tuesday.

The symposium that was graced by erstwhile Botswana president, Sir Ketumile Masire drew participants from 45 countries including civil society and top level government technocrats ranging from Permanent Secretaries (PS), heads of government departments and chief administrative officers.

The conference was tailored to disseminating findings of a report from an international workshop in August hosted by Uganda on how best to speed up the pace of development among low income countries.

The report calls for engendering political goodwill, citizen empowerment and provision of a solid legal framework for performance contracting.

Far from being incompetent or incorrigibly corrupt, Mitala, while discussing the impact of corruption on public service delivery, highlighted the financial challenges faced by lowly paid civil servants.

"I have always told international experts complaining about the competences of our civil servants to compare their pay with what our civil servants earn. While they are busy looking for places like Mweya to spend their money, our civil servants are devising means of saving enough money to buy sour cassava and weevil infested beans for their families," Mitala noted.

Mitala's inadvertent wading into a topic that has proved touchy over the years seemed to excite technocrats present. But he was in no mood for a full blown debate about it.

However, later, during the plenary session, Edith Mwanje and Dorcas Okalany, permanent secretaries in ministry of East African Community Affairs and Justice and constitutional affairs respectively, dredged up the matter, saying it ought to be urgently addressed if graft in the civil service is to be stemmed.

"Let us look at the issue of pay more objectively because it matters in the fight against corruption in the civil service. There is no remorse any more for civil servants to take bribes because they feel they are under paid yet they have so many bills to pick up. The country can do better with a leaner but better paid civil service," Mwanje said.

Earlier, during a tea break, a group of permanent secretaries got into an animated discussion about the 'unfairness' of the current salary structure, especially between civil servants in  mainstream civil service and technocrats in government departments under 'authorities' like KCCA and Uganda Revenue Authority.

In his opening remarks, the Director General of UMI, Dr. James Nkata, had also described huge salary disparities as one of "the structures that support corruption."

Two years ago, government, following persistent complaints about salary disparities, promised to constitute a salary review commission to address the matter. But the commission is yet to be constituted.

At that time, then Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, was reacting to a strike by primary teachers in government schools over government's failure to redeem its promise on giving them a salary increment.

The Transperancy International 2015 report, based on 2,400 Ugandan respondents, puts Police at 63% on the corruption index, followed by tax officials and government officials at 48% each. Judges and magistrates follow closely at 45%, the public sector at 44% and business executives at 40%.