When prosecutors went on strike….

The strike by government prosecutors took close to two months and it is believed to be the longest period prosecutors anywhere in the world have been on strike. talked to three government prosecutors on how they spent their time while away from court.

The impact of the strike saw majority of the police stations around the country filled to capacity, those on remand who sought release on bail could not be helped as the prosecutors were nowhere to oppose their bail application. The state prosecutors were up in arms as they demanded for a pay raise and other welfare issues such as security, cars, and medical allowances.

According to the current salary structure of prosecutors under the Department for Public Prosecutions, the lowest ranking prosecutor (state prosecutor) earns a monthly gross pay of Shs644, 963 with the highest ranking prosecutor at the rank of Senior Principal State Attorney, pocketing a gross monthly pay of Shs2.1m.

The then striking prosecutors wanted the lowest ranking officer to earn a monthly pay of Shs3.5m and the highest to earn Shs6.2m. The strike was late last year suspended indefinitely by the prosecutors who resumed work amidst a huge case backlog of pending cases to give chance to government to address their plight. Given the long period of the strike by the prosecutors, it meant that they had a lot of time to engage in other ventures. Of course this long period created some sort of uncertainty among the prosecutors with thinking the government (their employer) had other thoughts and alternatives to replace them with another set of prosecutors.

Jonathan Muwaganya, the Resident State Attorney at Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court.
The strike created a lot of free time for me. In my ten years’ career, I had been busy from January to December and I think for the first time in the ten years I was able to spend some quality time with my family and village people.
I was also able to revive old networks by communicating to friends. That was the only time I was able to go through my phone book and sent short text messages and interacted more with friends and family on several social media platforms.
Previously, I could only respond to messages and calls but I could not personally initiate calls or messages due to the busy schedule.

Because of the uncertainty that came along with the prolonged strike, I used that quality time to think through other alternative means beyond office. For example, I devoted some time to involve myself in animal rearing. I visited model farms to learn some skills since I have passion for animals.

Since September 2015, I had handled some controversial cases such as the Pine car murder which left me very tired and emotionally drained. The strike was therefore a blessing in disguise as I needed some time to cool off the stress.
But I was also among those prosecutors who pursued negotiations aimed at ending the strike. So these negotiations also took away some of my time. I had to involve myself in doing some reading and researching about industrial action of what the implications of the strike were.
I also engaged myself with different stake holders to popularise our cause and to ensure that the leaders and the public did not misunderstand us but know that we were merely pushing for our rights for better pay.

David Baxter Bakibinga, president of the Uganda Association of Prosecutors
I continued to fight for realisation of the rights of my fellow prosecutors during the strike.
At one time, I remember, we had to meet up with the government’s ad hoc committee on salary enhancement which comprised the Finance Minister, Public Service Minister, Justice Minister, the DPP, the Director of Civil Litigation. The meeting with the adhoc committee of government was intended to go through the contested areas for rationalization.

We also followed up this matter with Parliament, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament. We also had to travel to State House to meet President Museveni, unfortunately, he was very busy as he had numerous outside engagements and we didn’t meet him to discuss our issues.
But also as a small committee, we kept on meeting to strategise on how to better engage the government to enhance our welfare.

We also used to have open door policy and in the process, we met the European Union (EU) ambassador whom we gave a copy of our petition. He was shocked when we converted the salary we get into dollars as was very little. The EU envoy also wanted to identify areas with JLOS that they could fund for betterment of justice delivery.
Generally, it was not a rosy two months for me and my committee as we used to have media engagements all the time. Journalists kept on calling us almost on daily basis to find out how far we had reached with negotiations with government.
So we had to be prepared all the time with the latest information to give to the journalists. We also used to appear on various television stations and radio stations to explain to the public what was going on.

In all our engagements, the government officials kept on assuring us that something was being done and they also emphasised that we should be patient. We are optimistic as prosecutors that we shall be among the categories of civil servants whom government is going to consider first to enhance our salary starting with in new financial year in July this year.

Gloria Aleluyia, a state attorney attached to Mbarara Chief Magistrates Court
The two-month strike gave me an opportunity to inspect my maize farm in Bushenyi. The time I spent at the farm has yielded results as the harvest this time round was much more than the previous times where I did not involve myself a lot.
Besides farming, the strike presented an opportunity to interact more with my family since the nature of our work makes us leave home very early and return late in the evening. So I bonded more with my immediate family and also visited my other relatives in Kabale.

Being a devout Christian, the strike presented an opportunity for me to participate in the choir practice since I love singing.
As the strike went on for unnecessarily long, I thought of employing myself by opening up private chambers but I knew that this does not come easily and I needed capital which I did not have at the time.
I also thought that our employers were not minding about our plight since they were not giving us positive feedback but instead we were being threatened with sacking if we did not return to work.
I was offended by the attitude of these people; not being appreciative of our work.