Cabinet asks Public Service to streamline civil servants pay
Government Chief Whip Ruth Nankabirwa
Kampala- A Cabinet meeting chaired by President Museveni yesterday tasked Public Service minister Wilson Muruli Mukasa to provide a comprehensive package for civil servants’ remuneration within two months.
Making the revelation to Parliament, Government Chief Whip Ruth Nankabirwa (NRM, Kiboga) said the move is intended to cure pay disparities among civil servants.
“The President has directed the Minister of Public Service to come up with a comprehensive package which will set the salary scale for all the civil servants in Uganda; the minister has been given two months by Cabinet which sat today,” Ms Nankabirwa said.
Speaking about a petition by medical workers who are seeking Parliament intervention over what they called “poor remuneration,” Ms Nankabirwa said the new package will address the salary increment cries across public service.
“Today before Cabinet, which has been chaired by President Museveni, a similar matter was discussed; the concern of different groups of people, the prosecutors, medical workers and other groups who come up to petition,” she said.
Public prosecutors have had a lengthy wrangle with government in the recent past, laying down tools over low pay.
The Uganda Medical Association has, through a petition to Parliament, called for intervention in their pay woes too.
In their petition presented by Ms Rosette Christine Mutambi (NRM, Mbarara District), the doctors and nurses are aggrieved over their remuneration which they say has not been revised to suit the current situation.
The medical practitioners want government to pay duty-facilitating allowance for all medical practitioners and establish duty-facilitating allowances to all medical interns and senior medical officers.
Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah was, however, reluctant to refer the petition to Parliament’s Health Committee because Parliament had already considered the matter.
Mr Oulanyah guided the House: “This House has had discussions on the pay of our health workers not once, many times and Parliament has taken a position on this subject matter.”
Mr Oulanyah instead instructed the Minister of Public Service to, while considering general matters of public servants’ remuneration, report back to Parliament on the doctors’ pay “within one week.”
“While we complete the processes of harmonisation of salaries and pay to all workers in Uganda, on this specific petition, we need a brief by the responsible minister next Thursday,” Mr Oulanyah directed.
In a conversation with the Daily Monitor, the President of Uganda Medical Association, Dr Fred Biso, said the backbone of their petition is an increment of lunch allowances and a provision of a perk for coaching medical interns.
“Lunch allowance has stagnated at Shs66,000 since 1996. At that time the cost of lunch was about Shs2,000. Currently you struggle to find decent lunch at Shs10,000,” Dr Biso said.
Ms Mutambi said the failure by government to revise their salaries and allowances of medical practitioners has negatively affected medical services in the country, encouraged brain drain and has caused rampant absenteeism.
