Civil servants miss salaries over national ID errors

A group of civil servants working in various districts is crying foul after they missed salaries for over a year resulting from mistakes made on their national identity cards (IDs).

Numbering over a dozen, seven of them teachers from Bugweri district, the civil servants said they are suffering, yet the mistakes were made by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA).

New Vision has seen another list of civil servants from Bulambuli district, whose salaries have also been withheld over errors on their national IDs, even after they had them corrected.

Other victims were from Bukomansimbi, Kamuli and Mayuge districts, according to a source, who said their salary arrears had accumulated to over sh100m.

In a letter dated March 18, 2020 addressed to the public service ministry permanent secretary, Catherine Bitarakwate, the chief administrative officer (CAO) of Bulambuli, Andrew Milton Chelangat Kamalingin, lodged a complaint about the matter.

Kamalingin, who asked the ministry to validate the records of four of their staff, said: "We have records of staff with mismatched names and they have tried to rectify the issues with NIRA.

However, the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS) has continuously captured the record with errors. To date, the staff have not accessed the payroll."

Victim speaks out

One of those affected, Janipher Mamayi Musoba, a teacher at Nkutu Memorial School in Bugweri, said she had not been able to get her monthly salary of sh900,000 due to a mistake in her name.

Musoba said her unpaid salary arrears had accumulated to sh13m.

Musoba said she sat and passed public service interviews in March last year, and was posted to Nkutu Memorial School, where she immediately started teaching.

However, she has never enjoyed the fruits of her sweat to date.

Musoba is part of a group of eight civil servants from Bugweri who have missed salaries over errors on their national IDs.

She said even after they had rectified the errors, they had, for unknown reasons, still not been paid.

"I was told to provide my details so that I could be put on the payroll. Everything was fine until it got to my national ID. I realised there was a mistake.

My middle name (Mamayi) was repeated and the last name (Musoba) was missing on the ID. I corrected the mistake and NIRA gave me a letter which I took to the public service ministry.

However, the public service ministry officials said my photo and date of birth could not be accessed in their IPPS system," Musoba narrated.

In a letter dated December 6, 2019, to the Bugweri CAO, NIRA confirmed rectifying Musoba's national ID details.

However, Musoba said when she contacted the Bugweri district authorities, they told her they could not pay her until the issue was rectified and verified by the public service ministry.

"But the officials told me that my money was sent to the district."

Due to financial hardships she was going through, Musoba decided to go back to NIRA headquarters in Kololo, Kampala, but officials there insisted that her details had been corrected.

Frustrated, Musoba called the public service ministry hotline in February this year and she was told to travel to Kampala with her documents.

On reaching the ministry, Musoba said she was told that the problem was still with NIRA.

"So, who is telling the truth and who is not? A ministry official told me that there were many people facing the same problem and that he was taking the list to NIRA to have the problem rectified. But to date, we have not heard from him," she said.

The now suspicious and frustrated Musoba fears that there could be a ploy to steal their salaries.

The development comes in the wake of a loan scandal, where civil servants' salaries, especially those of teachers and Police officers, were deducted in a dubious manner.

NIRA spokesperson Gilbert Kadilo said he did not have details about the matter, but suggested that the issues be verified on an individual basis.

He wondered why the public service ministry was not verifying such cases, yet they have an interface with NIRA.

Attempts to get a comment from Allan Muhereza, the commissioner human resource management at the public service ministry under whose office the matter falls, were futile.