Former RDCs ask for retirement benefits

Jul 17, 2020

In a petition to Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, the RDCs said they wanted to be facilitated with housing, health, transport and security allowances upon retirement.

Former Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) and their deputies have asked Parliament to consider enacting "a legal instrument" to streamline their retirement benefits on termination of their terms of service.
In a petition to Speaker Rebecca Kadaga, the RDCs said they wanted to be facilitated with housing, health, transport and security allowances upon retirement, like the case is for other public servants.
RDCs are presidential appointees.
Under Article 203 of the Constitution, they, among other duties, co-ordinate the administration of government services in districts, advise district chairpersons on national matters, chair the district security committee and represent the President.
A person must be qualified to be a Member of Parliament to be eligible for appointment as RDC. Like many other presidential appointments, often, the President drops or redeploys RDCs to other public offices.
Many have also sought elective offices. There are also those who are appointed as RDC after losing elective offices.
"Like all other civil servants, we make a great contribution to this country.
But, while our counterparts retire honourably to a decent retirement benefit, our services are terminated in the media and the state forgets about us. That is why we want our benefits entrenched," Thomas Okoth Nyalulu, the former RDC of Pallisa, said.
"Imagine serving a district that is 100km away from your home for 10 years, it means you can hardly find the time to invest. But after our services are terminated, the salaries are stopped, leaving us with no source of income to fall back to.
We retire into pathetic financial situations and precarious personal security without state support." Kadaga said, although they previously enacted laws that establish the office of the RDC and define their roles, the security of tenure and terms
of service were left hanging, which needs to be revisited.
"Indeed, RDCs play a central role coordinating government programmes in the districts and they deserve better. I will present this petition before Parliament tomorrow (today) and forward it to the committee of presidential affairs for further scrutiny," she noted.
The former deputy RDC of Pallisa district, William Kintu, said: "Owing to the rigour and sensitivity of our duties, which include chairing district security committees, we are impeded from setting up personal commercial ventures in our districts and neither can we set up in our duty stations because of the uncertainty of duration of stay."
The petitioners proposed that the legal instrument they are seeking to streamline their retirement benefits should be applied retrospectively. They want the legal instrument to streamline the mechanisms of exit of service for RDCs and their deputies to provide for ample notice of at least six months of pending termination of employment.
"We should be prepared for termination of service. We should not be fired in the media and we should be rehabilitated in a retooling institute, preferably affiliated to Parliament or the Uganda Management Institute, to aide a smooth reintegration into social life," Nyalulu said.
Uganda's law books provide for various forms of retirement benefits for public and civil servants on termination of services.
Recently, Parliament passed the Administration of Judiciary Act to, among others, allow judges retire with their full emolument packages. Former presidents, vice-presidents and prime ministers are catered for, on retirement, by the State.
Kadaga has often made the case for former parliamentarians and speakers to retire decently.
A Parliament Pension Act was thus set into motion.

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