23,000 jobs vacant in 73 districts

Kampala- About 23,000 posts in 73 districts remain vacant despite the country grappling with problems of soaring unemployment, a new report reveals.
Parliament’s Public Accounts (Local Government) Committee report on the 2015/2016 findings of the Auditor General (AG) indicates that of the 77,713 posts that are established in the local governments, 23,093 are vacant, implying that nearly 30 per cent of the jobs are not filled.

The report is a follow-up on an investigation by the AG on district local governments and municipal councils for the Financial Year 2015/16.

The AG’s report covers 111 district local governments and 28 municipal councils across the country.
Among the districts sampled for staffing levels, Kalangala, whose staffing gap was described as dire, registers the highest number of vacant posts at 87 per cent, followed by Nwoya at 67 per cent, Agago at 65 per cent, Ssembabule at 62 per cent, and both Kiruhura and Bukedea at 58 per cent, and Alebtong, Amuria, and Kiryandongo all standing at 57 per cent.

The district staffing figures, which are extracted from a number of posts filled and vacant in the districts exclude job gaps in 28 municipalities in the districts, but are captured in the MPs’ report.

On the other hand, districts with most of the positions filled are Kibuku with 90 per cent, Jinja with 88 per cent, both Pallisa and Kayunga at 86 per cent, Kiboga and Budaka at 83 per cent, Ibanda at 82 per cent, Rakai at 80 per cent and Wakiso at 79 per cent. Others are Bukwo, Moyo and Masaka all standing at 78 per cent, and Kotido at 77 per cent.

Justification
The report also indicates that a number of local governments have failed to attract high-grade professional personnel, leaving most of their heads of department serving in acting capacity, contrary to the stipulated time period of only six months.

“Understaffing in local governments constrains service delivery. Districts have failed to attract some cadres due to low remuneration and yet higher qualifications were required, specifically for the posts of district engineer, district health officers, and chief finance officer,” the report, tabled in Parliament on Wednesday, warns.

The report also criticises restrictive and sectarian recruitment in the district local governments.

Sectarianism
“There is a practice of ring-fencing some jobs for the individuals born in that district. For example in Apac, the Chief Finance Officer had retired but was given a contract, which was also renewed,” the report adds.
The MPS also link understaffing in the local governments and municipalities to poor revenue collection with the sampled ones registering a revenue shortfall of Shs10 billion. Only Shs28b was collected by the districts against a projection of Shs39b for the financial year under consideration.
To fill the vacant positions, the committee recommends that the ministries of Finance, Local Government and Public Service come up with joint strategies.

“The Ministry of Local Government should work with the Ministry of Public Service to waive some non-critical requirements for positions such as district engineers and chief finance officers that have continuously failed to attract candidates,” the committee report reads in part.

The MPs also proposed that the Public Service ministry halts recruitment of non-vital staff in the districts with above average staff numbers and progressively raise recruitment in entities with below average staffing levels.

Minister speaks out
But Local Government minister Tom Butime said on Wednesday that the problem of vacancies in local governments can only be resolved if more resources were made available.

“Those vacancies must be declared by the concerned districts to the Public Service and ministry of Finance so as to organise how those positions will be filled. If Finance does not have that money, then those positions will not be filled because there will be no salaries. Positions being vacant is not enough. They must correspond to the available finances,” Mr Butime said.

Parliament is mandated under Article 163(5) of the Constitution to debate and consider the Auditor General’s report on the Public Accounts of Uganda and take appropriate action, six months after submission.

Among other crosscutting issues, the report also reveals that Shs13.5b remains unaccounted for in the district local governments.
The committee also discovered that ghost youth groups were formed by some community development officers to swindle public funds meant for the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP). The committee recommends that government recovers the funds given to such groups or the police arrest the non-complaint beneficiaries.

The committee report further illustrates the problem of vacancies in government with a separate audit by the AG revealing that at least 40,000 government jobs in 19 selected entities are not occupied.

The 2017 AG’s review of the approved staffing structures of seven ministries and 12 statutory enterprises revealed that the Uganda Police Force has a staffing shortage of 28,791 personnel, followed by Uganda Prison Services with 6,324 unfilled jobs, while the Judiciary has 2,864 unfilled slots.

A separate investigation by Daily Monitor in 2015 revealed that more than 32,746 public service job slots were vacant in the various government institutions as thousands of desperate unemployed Ugandans continue to search for the few available jobs.

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