Prosecutors’ pay is pathetic - DPP

Justice Chibita (L) explains to the Committee at Parliament yesterday. PHOTO BY Geoffrey sseruyange.

What you need to know:

The demand. More than 250 State prosecutors are demanding that government increases their salaries since the current ones are not commensurate to their workload.

Parliament:
After years of prosecuting criminal cases, some involving billions of shillings while earning ‘peanuts’, hundreds of public prosecutors have demanded that their salaries be increased or they lay down their tools.

While appearing before the Parliamentary Legal Committee yesterday, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Justice Mike Chibita and his deputy Mr Amos Ngolobe, told MPs that underfunding to his office [DPP] had hampered service delivery with poor pay making the matter worse.

“The salaries for our staff at DPP are pathetic,” Justice Chibita said. “We are not happy with the salaries and we would appreciate your help to make it commensurate with the work we do.”
Justice Chibita told MPs that three weeks ago, prosecutors under their umbrella organisation, Association of Prosecutors, had vowed to strike over poor pay.

The DPP also told committee members that poor pay had over the years failed his office to sufficiently prepare witnesses before appearing in court.

However, MPs led by the shadow attorney general Mr Abdul Katuntu (Bugweri) and Krispus Ayena (Oyam North) blamed Mr Chibita for not being assertive in the quest for increased pay for the state prosecutors. Other legislators accused the DPP of “massaging a crisis” with others saying the debate on the establishment of a salaries commission should be revived to streamline civil servants salaries.

According to the structure [2014/15] seen by the Daily Monitor, a state prosecutor earns Shs1.14m. The deputy DPP Mr Ngolobe, earns Shs3m.
This does not compare well with officials at the Inspectorate of Government, who at the same ranks earn between Shs6m and Shs10m per month respectively.

However, Justice Chibita, who is paid by the Judiciary because he is a judge, earns Shs11m per month. Mr Ngolobe told the Committee that each state prosecutor handles more than 230 case files which is a big work load. He said prosecutors rush through case files thus compromise the quality of performance. The committee heard that although the DPP’s office had submitted a budget of Shs58b, only Shs24b had been allocated to the office.

This, according to officials indicates a funding gap of Shs34b, which calls for urgently action by the Finance ministry to find money for the prosecution of gender based violence offences, implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering Law passed last year and prosecution of corruption, fraud and other serious crimes.

However, ministry of Finance Spokesperson, Mr Jim Mugunga, who had yesterday promised to get back to this newspaper to explain why they had cut funding to the DPP office, could not provide the details by press time.

DPP salary structure
Position Salary
Senior Principal Attorney Shs2.4m
Principal State Attorney Shs2.1m
Senior State Attorney Shs1.5m
State Attorney Shs1.2m