Districts blamed in failed pay for medics

By Raymond Baguma

Districts have been cited for failing to submit relevant documentation under the integrated payroll system, which has affected payment of health workers’ salaries.

Dr. Diana Atwine the director of the Medicine and Health Services Delivery Monitoring Unit (MHSDMU) was on Monday addressing journalists at Media Centre.

She was responding to a statement made recently by the shadow health minister Dr. Lulume Bayiga that health workers have gone months without pay.

She said since November last year, her unit has been registering complaints from districts, of non-payment of salaries, underpayment, deletion from the payroll and lack of access to the payroll.

Following these complaints, Dr. Atwine said that the unit investigated and established that by the end of January about 5,585 workers from 51 districts were affected.

Atwine said she intervened after the issue was raised to the President who directed the unit to work with the minister of economic monitoring and line ministries such as health, financier, public service and local government, to resolve the workers’ salary complaints.

Atwine who heads the inter-ministerial taskforce said that district accounting officers had been notified to submit information regarding outstanding cases of salary payment by February 7.

She said that understaffing in the ministry of public service and the slow response by accounting officers to send workers’ information, is affecting implementation of the Integrated Payroll and Pension system.

According to Dr. Atwine, the taskforce has so far handled issues of promoted civil servants with unpaid allowances, transferred civil servants who could not access the payroll.

Also handled are cases of workers who were erroneously deleted and newly recruited workers whose names had not been on the payroll, said Dr. Atwine.

She noted that government is losing money due to failure by the Medical Board to recommend the removal of civil servants who resigned their positions due to ill health.

The taskforce has also been able to delete duplicated records of workers, retired civil servants, as well as correction of bank account details for affected civil servants.