120,000 teachers not paid for three months

 

 

Primary and secondary school teachers as well as tutors in tertiary institutions in several districts are yet to receive their April salaries, 42 days after they were supposed to be paid. 

 

The list of affected districts from the Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU), which the public service ministry has confirmed, shows 62 districts whose secondary school teachers have not received salaries for May. These include Butaleja, Napak, Busia, Iganga, Hoima, Luwero, Masaka and Masindi, among others. 

 

Tutors in 22 districts including Kotido, Mityana, Nakaseke and Kalungu, have also not received their May salaries.

Primary school teachers in 47 districts including Gomba, Kalungu and Mukono municipality, have not got their salaries for June either. 

 

 It is the same for secondary school teachers in 87 districts and tutors in 20 districts.

 

“Close to three quarters of the country’s teaching fraternity has not been paid their June salaries. Furthermore, most of these teachers have not been paid since April 2013. How are our teachers expected to survive?” asked UNATU general secretary James Tweheyo.

 

The development comes at a time when UNATU and the Government have locked horns over the latter’s failure to fulfil its pledge to give teachers a 20% salary increment this financial year.

 

President Museveni on Wednesday warned teachers against a strike UNATU has scheduled for September. 

 

Joseph Kiggundu, the commissioner for communications in the Ministry of Public Service and Savia Mugwanya, in charge of the payroll, attributed the salary problem to a shortfall in funding experienced in the fourth quarter of the last financial year.

 

They said the problem affected both the local and central governments’ budget votes for salaries.

Officials in the ministries of internal affairs, information technology, as well as water and environment, are also yet to get last month’s salaries, according to Mugwanya.

 

Also affected are workers in the electoral commission, Police, prisons and the National Planning Authority.

“Some teachers received salaries. There are other districts, ministries and authorities that were affected because they have had salary shortfalls,” Mugwanya explained.  

 

She said the Ministry of Public Service had applied for a sh56m supplementary budget to pay all salary arrears, which is yet to be approved by Parliament. 

 

Tweheyo said the constant disappointments with the Government had increased anxiety among teachers, thus affecting the quality of education.