We need a predictable, equitable and reasonable reward policy

The media has been awash with all sorts of stories and analyses on the money shared among public servants as a presidential reward following the settlement over capital gains tax between Uganda and Heritage Oil.
A lot has been written for and against, mainly pitting the advocates for unquestionable value of presidential pledges against those who think that the offer was unfair, unreasonable, and bordering on corruption.
A look, especially, at the list of beneficiaries, and the fact that these are not the least paid in government, has lent a lot of credence to the widely held view that government is not there to serve everybody, but rather, that we have a system of sharing spoils in this country for those fortunate or skillful enough to access the ‘high table’.

What should concern us most is the moral hazard this generates for public servants. A number of observers already have mentioned the absence of a policy on rewarding exemplary service in this country.
The closest there is are the many medals awarded at public functions, which, the intransigence involved aside, have overtime turned into some kind of joke and a national embarrassment.

For starters, it’s not possible to say that the teams of lawyers and technocrats are the first to have done good to Uganda. We have in yester-years witnessed vindictiveness when former heads of state, with arguably bigger contributions to this country than many, have passed on.
Whether they can be given descent send-offs, or if at all their remains should be repatriated, became headlines.
The biggest effect of this ‘one-off handshake’ is to demoralise the multitudes that have silently and consistently done their share in nation building.
How are we to explain this to pensioners, who after slaving at our primary schools and hospitals, cannot access their pensions on time or have the same stolen?

And it will be equally difficult to explain to colleagues in the contributing institutions who might have made an effort, but were not visible enough to receive the handshake, since, if the list is anything to go by, we see that the officers mentioned are rather senior, if not heads in their respective departments.
Such actions make official explanations for not boosting pay, like the risk of escalating wage bills appear like excuses.
How then are we to interpret what looks like rushed efforts by individuals, some of who, despite the right to go to court over matters like this are in fact, civil servants, who are supposed out of necessity to appear and be perceived as neutral, only serving ‘public interest’.

And how are we to explain the consequences of a matter like this pushing two critical arms of government, the courts and Parliament to an embarrassing game of brinksmanship? What is ‘public interest’ in a country like ours anyway?
Let us for a moment consider parents among us with school going children capable of following the news. Very many questions remain unanswered as to why these kinds of things take place.
Dinner tables now are vibrant with young souls imagining the handshake could not have bypassed the parent, leave alone that this parent possibly only is a chauffeur to the supposed ‘ handshake recipient’ , you still work in the same place!
Some of us have laboured at times to explain to our colleagues that moral hazard might be more powerful and dangerous than is often appreciated. Very few things have as much power to corrupt as that of bad example.

As the Banyakitara love to say, ‘ku oyiba oheekire, oba noyorekyerera owomumugongo’ literally translated to mean that ‘a parent who steals while carrying a baby on the back is in fact giving foundational tutorials to the baby on tips to becoming a better thief’.
We need to structure our reward policies to be more predictable, equitable, reasonable, and to originate from policy, not individual whims. Only then shall we truly have embarked on a journey to build a nation we can all be proud of, and then shall we all be able to focus our energy on meaningfully becoming a middle income country.
Ms Balayo is a programmes staff at the Tripartite Initiative for Resource Governance in Africa (Tirga), an NGO and resource governance think tank in Kampala.