A retired judge’s misery – Part I

The terms and conditions of serving judges prohibit them from doing any other business to earn extra income besides what the State pays them.
The law and ethics of their profession and work will hold any judge criminally liable, punishable and removable from office if he or she indulges in corruption, abuse of office or other unauthorised acts or behaviour to benefit financially or otherwise.
In case of a retired justice of the Supreme Court who served for 15 or less years, he or she is paid on average a monthly pension of about Shs2 million plus security guards allowances of Shs1,125,000 as contents of a recent communication from the Permanent Secretary/Secretary to the Judiciary to a retired justice of the Supreme Court reads:

“My lord, reference is made to your letter dated Feb 23, 2018, which you addressed to senior presidential advisor/veterans affairs and copied to the Hon. Chief Justice in connection to the above subject, the update on the status of your retirement benefits is as follows”:
i) Ex-gratia for the house is Shs300 million paid at once.
ii) Pension Shs2.3 million paid on a monthly basis.
iii) Security (bodyguards/residential guards) Shs1,125,000 paid on a monthly basis.
iv) Maintenance and repairs of vehicles is not provided by the State.
v) Two domestic workers and a gardener not provided for by the State.
vi) Feeding three security and residential guards, not provided for by the State.

Ironically, while in service, judges are provided with travel, medical, transport, domestic servant, vehicle repairs, spares as well as fuel, allowances and other benefits.
However, as it can be seen above all these are not provided for by the State when a judge retires.
This is the average monthly expenditure of a retired Supreme Court judge who had served 15 or less years as a judge before retirement: Two domestic workers, gardeners and the driver, Shs1.5 million; car service and fuel, Shs1.5 million; expenditure on personal and medical needs, food and refreshment Shs1 million; stationery and secretarial services Shs400,000; dependants charges Shs1.5; telephone and internet Shs300,000; emergencies e.g. medicine, transportation for domestic workers, security guards, gardener and extras Shs500,000 shillings. So the total expenditure is close to Shs7 million.

As it can be seen, it is impossible for such a retired judge to cope with the expenditure he/she incurs daily, monthly and annually. The government of Uganda and the MPs who scathingly rubbished increase of judges’ allowances wrongly assume that retired judges have secret or unknown sources of income from which to pay for all the above expenditures, knowing that if they do not, they will be arrested, detained and convicted.
But oblivious to the fact that those who manage to pay must be accused for and charged with corruption if they do not explain satisfactorily where they got such huge extra money. In Part II, these contradictions and absurdity will be discussed.

Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge.
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