Pay civil servants reasonable salary to enhance performance

Allow me to react on the move by government to use biometric machines to track absentee teachers and health workers. Government believes that the introducing the use of biometric machines will reduce absenteeism and improve the quality of service delivery.

It is true that absenteeism is one of the major factors responsible for poor performance among civil servants across the country.
While the use of biometric machines is a brilliant idea and a step in the direction, my fear is that the machines will have limited success in attaining better service delivery.

This given that habitual absentee employees, those who report late for duty and leave their work stations early are a major challenge in many government offices. This fact often leads to a huge backlog of unfinished tasks in many public offices.
Teacher absenteeism is one of the most serious forms of corruption in our education system. Statistics show that teacher absenteeism in Uganda ranges from 11 per cent to 30 per cent. This obviously affects service delivery, results in poor performance, etc. Therefore, it is crucial that strict measures are taken to address the problem of absenteeism.

However, as a matter of urgency, government also needs to probe and ascertain what, for instance, drives a teacher to stay away from class and cause pupils to miss lessons.
The causes of teacher absenteeism are many and diversified and should all be addressed.
Merely rolling out biometric machines may not be a lasting solution to teacher absenteeism. For instance, some teachers absent themselves from class to engage in other activities such as riding boda bodas, tending their gardens, etc, in order to generate extra income to support their families.
Salary enhancement for civil servants is a better option than introducing biometric machines. Government should have tolled out the technology possibly after increasing salary to ascertain the response from the civil servants.

The machine will help to stop the habit by some civil servants failing to report to the duty stations but may not check the quality of service rendered.
Let government pay civil servants reasonably to motivate them do their work.