Kabale teachers cry out after months without pay

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Over a thousand teachers in public schools in Kabale are in dire straits after enduring months without pay.

Kabale District Woman MP Catherine Ndamira (NRM) disclosed this while speaking on the floor of Parliament on Thursday, February 27, 2025. This was during the Prime Minister’s question time segment.

“Today is February 27, 2025. Last year in June, Government paid only 300 teachers out of 2600. The rest were told to wait. Up to now, they are still going from office to office in Kabale District Local Government,” Ndamira cited.

“1000 primary teachers were not paid in June, 346 secondary school teachers were not paid, and 44 tertiary teachers as well….You know when a teacher misses any month, you can see the stress on their face,” she concluded.

However, Prime Minister (PM) Robinah Nabbanja said this could be as a result of a human resource audit the government undertook last year.

“Some teachers were not found at their stations of work during the audit exercise and so the Ministry of Public Service deleted them from the payroll. That required them to come to Kampala at the ministry of public service headquarters to be validated. Some districts did not come, other districts came,” Nabbanja explained adding that the validation exercise was public and announced all over.

State minister for sports Peter Ogwang expressed dismay.

“It is surprising that for a whole year, a civil servant particularly a leader who is entitled to his salary has not gotten his payment. I really want to request in line with the directive of the Prime Minister that we follow up and work closely with you. I will work with my permanent secretary and human resource department to follow up,” Ogwang pledged.

“But Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, maybe under your chairship, you would bring us finance, public service and us together so that this matter is handled once and for all,” he added.

Fast forward, Ndamira promised to supply authorities with a letter affected teachers wrote to the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and mother ministry. In response, Ogwang gave her an appointment of tomorrow at 10:00am.

Commenting on this subject, Muhamad Nsereko (Kampala Central, Indep) said the validation process would be less cumbersome if Government went digital.

“Why in this day and era are we still running a manual verification payroll with the digital migration that we have? When we are well aware that some things can be weaned out when there is digital migration. One by creation of a unique number. Two by capturing things like fingerprints, facial recognition and pairing this user interface at schools where people operate. At workplaces, just like when you enter here and look into the screen there, you are captured and your name,” Nsereko said.   

However, Speaker Anita Annet Among said the public service ministry cannot be squarely blamed, since in most cases, the affected civil servants were not present during the head count.  

“If I have come to your school and you are not there, what do you expect? We have staff of parliament, about three, we wrote and said there is going to be a human resource audit where they want you physically. They were not there, they lost out. Until they had to go and follow the auditor general up to his office,” Among illustrated.